Tobacco companies will have to pay for the costs of cleaning up millions of cigarette butts under new Spanish environmental regulations.
The rules, which are due to come into force on Friday, were approved last year as part of a law banning several types of single-use plastics such as cutlery, straws and picnic plates.
Spain’s crackdown on the cost of cleaning up discarded butts comes in response to a European Union directive aimed at reducing pollution from single-use plastics.
The new rules state that tobacco companies could also be required to pay for the installation of public receptacles to encourage smokers not to toss away cigarette butts.
Tobacco packaging should also urge smokers to dispose of butts responsibly.
Spain’s administration has yet to calculate how much tobacco companies will have to pay to compensate for the clean-up costs borne by local authorities, but one study suggests the amount could run into hundreds of millions of euros annually.
If smokers don’t have to take personal responsibility, I should be allowed to drop my chocolate bar wrappers and Mars Corp should be responsible for them.
What? It’s not the manufacturer’s fault that consumers go around littering everywhere.
Guess I’ll just empty my bins all over the street and blame it on the companies that manufactured my rubbish then?
Are chewing gum manufacturers going to be forced to scrape gum off of sidewalks, benches and the underside of school tables next? What about plastic bags or any other container manufacturers?
Doesn’t make any sense, punish the one who commited the offence.
Sounds like a good idea, but it’s basically just a new tax whilst the cigarettes were already highly taxed. There is also no correlation between the amount is tax gathered and the quality of cigarettes butts cleaning
Theres no way this is real. No way there could be a law this dumb.
What responsibility have the tabaco companies? The responsibility and cost should be assumed by smokers that no deposit the cigarette butt in apropiate tash.
7 comments
**From The Telegraph’s James Badcock:**
Tobacco companies will have to pay for the costs of cleaning up millions of cigarette butts under new Spanish environmental regulations.
The rules, which are due to come into force on Friday, were approved last year as part of a law banning several types of single-use plastics such as cutlery, straws and picnic plates.
Spain’s crackdown on the cost of cleaning up discarded butts comes in response to a European Union directive aimed at reducing pollution from single-use plastics.
The new rules state that tobacco companies could also be required to pay for the installation of public receptacles to encourage smokers not to toss away cigarette butts.
Tobacco packaging should also urge smokers to dispose of butts responsibly.
Spain’s administration has yet to calculate how much tobacco companies will have to pay to compensate for the clean-up costs borne by local authorities, but one study suggests the amount could run into hundreds of millions of euros annually.
**Read more for free here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/01/03/tobacco-companies-must-pay-clean-up-cigarette-butts-spanish/**
If smokers don’t have to take personal responsibility, I should be allowed to drop my chocolate bar wrappers and Mars Corp should be responsible for them.
What? It’s not the manufacturer’s fault that consumers go around littering everywhere.
Guess I’ll just empty my bins all over the street and blame it on the companies that manufactured my rubbish then?
Are chewing gum manufacturers going to be forced to scrape gum off of sidewalks, benches and the underside of school tables next? What about plastic bags or any other container manufacturers?
Doesn’t make any sense, punish the one who commited the offence.
Sounds like a good idea, but it’s basically just a new tax whilst the cigarettes were already highly taxed. There is also no correlation between the amount is tax gathered and the quality of cigarettes butts cleaning
Theres no way this is real. No way there could be a law this dumb.
What responsibility have the tabaco companies? The responsibility and cost should be assumed by smokers that no deposit the cigarette butt in apropiate tash.