Join the Bin Your Butt campaign

The Severn Estuary Partnership, an independent initiative hosted by Cardiff University, has recently launched a ‘Bin Your Butt’ campaign as part of its flagship Litter Free Coast and Sea Somerset project.

On 1st October 2020, the Severn Estuary Partnership, in collaboration with Litter Free Coast and Sea Dorset and Litter Free Dorset announced the launch of a new Bin Your Butt campaign. The campaign aims to tackle anti-social littering behaviour by reminding smokers to responsibly extinguish and dispose of their cigarettes, instead of tossing them onto the ground.

Our towns, rivers and seas are often littered with smoking-related rubbish. A recent Keep Britain Tidy survey found cigarette-related litter present at 79% of surveyed sites.

Cigarette butts can take anywhere from 18 months to 15 years to breakdown, depending on conditions, because the filters in cigarettes are made from a type of plastic, cellulose acetate, which does not biodegrade. Not only are the butts themselves a prolific form of plastic pollution, they are also heavily laden with toxic chemicals which can leach into the environment.

Land and marine wildlife frequently mistake cigarette butts for food and ingest them – with often fatal consequences for the animals.

Dropped cigarette butts can also easily fall into surface water drains on our streets and flow directly into rivers, lakes, and the sea. Surface water drains do not contain filters that prevent cigarette butts from passing through, and so the butts can directly enter our waterways, polluting our rivers, lakes and oceans.

Bin Your Butt is launching throughout Somerset and Dorset this month. The campaign asks people to use appropriate street bins, wall-mounted cigarette bins or a portable “stubby pack” to help dispose of cigarette butts responsibly.

You can follow the Bin Your Butt campaign on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Use the hashtag #BINYOURBUTT.

Litter Free Coast and Sea Somerset is the flagship project of the Severn Estuary Partnership. The project was set up in 2016, funded by Wessex Water, the Environment Agency, Sedgemoor District Council and Cardiff University. The community-led campaign is designed to protect bathing water quality and reduce levels of beach and marine litter along the coast.

Litter Free Coast and Sea Dorset is the sister project to Litter Free Coast and Sea Somerset and will be running the Bin Your Butt campaign along with Litter Free Dorset and the Severn Estuary Partnership, hosted by Cardiff University.

The Severn Estuary Partnership team are always keen to hear from anyone who would like to find out more and get involved with any of their projects, so please get in touch.

Watch the campaign video on YouTube to find out more.