CD&V Brussels hands out free pocket ashtrays: “A cigarette butt is so much more than ‘small litter’” | Brussels
BrusselsDuring the World Cleanup Day on Saturday, the Brussels faction of CD&V handed out free pocket ashtrays. With the campaign, she wanted to encourage smokers to stop throwing their butts on the floor.
In March, Brussels put together a CD ‘Plan Clean Streets’, with measures fifteen action points that should ensure a cleaner Brussels through awareness, prevention and repression. One of those points is the distribution of pocket ashtrays, so that smokers dispose of their cigarette butts correctly.
“Throwing a cigarette butt after smoking may only seem like a ‘small piece of litter’, but it certainly isn’t,” says Brussels MP Bianca Debaets. “Today we see all too often that smokers are given a kind of safe-conduct to throw their butts on the street without any hesitation. That urgently needs to change, especially when you know that one cigarette butt can contaminate up to 500 liters of water and takes more than ten years to decompose.”
Biodegradable Filters
That is why CD&V Brussels gathered at the Oude Graanmarkt on Saturday to hand out pocket ashtrays to smoking passers-by. “We don’t want to stigmatize smokers”, says Debaets, “but we do want to point out to them that the waste from their cigarettes must be disposed of correctly. By offering them a pocket ashtray, they can still enjoy their cigarettes on the road. , to throw all collected butts in the garbage.”
Senator Maud Vanwalleghem admits that cigarette manufacturers should use biodegradable filters. “For example, we cannot just decide on our own in Brussels, but hopefully we will also find support for the appeal at the higher political levels,” it sounds.
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