City of Melbourne turning cigarette butts into plastic products

The City of Melbourne has become one of only two councils in Australia to run a citywide initiative to recycle millions of cigarette butts into industrial products, according to Lord Mayor Robert Doyle AC.

Surveys have found that around 10,500 cigarette butts from the central city are being deposited on the ground every day. Further studies have shown that of the four disposal routes (recycling, litter, landfill and incineration), recycling the cigarette butts has the lowest global warming impact.

With this in mind, the City is undertaking a project to recycle binned cigarette butts into practical items such as shipping pallets and plastic furniture. Funded by the Victorian government’s Litter Hotspots program, the project will see the City partner with Enviropoles, which collects the cigarette waste, and TerraCycle, which converts the butts into plastic products.

“We have collected 1.2 million butts from around Melbourne’s universities and hospitals and busy CBD locations that can be repurposed,” the Lord Mayor said.

As part of the project, the City of Melbourne today placed a Perspex box filled with 200,000 cigarette butts on the banks of the Yarra River to highlight the impact that littering has on our streets and waterways. The box was placed in Queensbridge Square, where three solar compaction litter bins are located.

The chair of the City of Melbourne’s Environment portfolio, Councillor Cathy Oke, said the City will be installing more than 360 smart bins in the CBD following a successful trial of 17 bins last year. She said, “We hope this project will motivate smokers to place their cigarette butts in one of the butt bins located around the CBD.”

Image caption: ​Enviropoles Operations Manager Chris Holwell with 68 kg worth of cigarette butts that have been collected from Melbourne’s streets for recycling.