30% of litter in Brussels is cigarette butts
The Agence Bruxelles Propreté (‘The Brussels Cleanliness Agency’) has found that cigarette butts represent 30% of all litter in the Belgian capital, according to an article published today in the Dernière Heure.
The Brussels Region had recently requested €203,000 in compensation from the tobacco industry, to be used specifically for cleaning the capital’s streets of cigarette butts. In response to this request, Cimabel (Belgian-Luxembourg federation of cigarette manufacturers), Fetabel (the federation of producers and importers of rolling tobacco in Belgium and Luxembourg) and the Belgian subsidiary of the multinational Philip Morris sent a letter to the Brussels Secretary of State for Cleanliness, Fadila Laanan, informing her of their willingness to cooperate, provided that there was sufficient evidence that cigarette butts constituted a significant proportion of all Brussels litter. The study conducted by the Agence Bruxelles Propreté was carried out primarily as a response to this request from the tobacco industry.
The Dernière Heure article also reported that a survey conducted in 2018 by Tabacstop found that smokers represent 26% of the Brussels population. The Region intends to take measures to reduce this figure.
