Litter

Lord Rea Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rea (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for putting this Question about a topic which has long been on the agenda and will not go away any time soon unless they listen to the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, who might get some action going.

The problem has got worse since the use of plastic and other non-biodegradable materials multiplied due to industrialisation and commercialisation throughout the world. I have seen idyllic tropical beaches spoilt by mounds of plastic bric-a-brac thousands of miles away from its place of origin. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean is a giant garbage patch where many thousand tonnes of plastic rubbish revolve in a slow whirlpool or gyre, causing great harm to marine life. This rubbish mostly originates from the land, blown from landfill sites or thoughtless dumping. I have been saddened to see many rural roadside hedges and verges in the UK heavily contaminated with plastic bags and other non-degradable rubbish. Removing it is labour intensive and expensive for local councils. Local volunteer groups do a valiant job but only scratch the surface of the problem.

I want to concentrate on a specific form of litter—cigarette stubs. We all know how ubiquitous they are. Despite the level of smoking dropping significantly in the last decade or two, nearly 6,400 tonnes of waste are still caused annually by smoking. This mainly consists of cigarette filter butts which take 10 to 15 years to biodegrade. Some 1,400 tonnes are discarded on streets and footpaths and must be picked up and disposed of by local government street-cleaning services. On the whole they do this unpleasant job efficiently; they deserve our thanks. Some councils, while clearing up the cigarette rubbish, use strategies to discourage smoking, including deterrents and incentives. In the City of London, for instance, if a street environment officer sees you dropping a cigarette butt, you will be issued with a fixed penalty notice and now with a “Quit Here” card with details of your local stop smoking service. If the smoker then follows this up and succeeds in quitting, they are given a £20 Boots voucher. Wandsworth was planning to pilot a similar scheme last year, together with pocket ashtrays promoting local stop smoking services.

These schemes have not yet been evaluated but they are surely a step towards eliminating the problem at source. There are other similar schemes around the country which the Minister may be able to tell us about, but no central government funding is earmarked for this, so councils will now find it difficult to fund any anti-smoking messages which could be displayed on bins for cigarette end disposal in busy shopping streets, for instance. This was not done in Middlewich, where 32 butt bins were mounted on walls around the town last February. The sting in the tail is that the £5,000 cost of installing these was borne by Japan Tobacco International, which used the publicity as part of a corporate responsibility deal. Naturally, there were no anti-smoking messages on those bins. This form of activity by the tobacco industry is against the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Its guidelines make it clear that government endorsement of tobacco industry corporate responsibility activity, which could include activity relating to litter, can be used to create a more credible profile for the industry and its policy positions.

I hope the Minister can say that the Government will strongly discourage this form of funding for local authorities and instead step in with assistance in mounting these health messages. In effect, funding from the tobacco industry is a form of Faustian pact, considering the lethal nature of its products.