Gent in response To a question from councillor Bert Misplon about the cleanliness in and around the city of Ghent, has ships Bram Van Braeckevelt (Green), a remarkable idea launched: deposit on cigarette butts. “No local authority, but we should at least think about it.”
cigarette butts are a real pest, not only in Ghent. They are carelessly thrown away, but do not get degraded in the nature and also not cleaned up by vuilnisdiensten. “4.5 trillion of the yearly 6 trillion cigarettes would in the environment end up”, know of Braekevelt. “90 percent of those cigarettes has a filter with cellulose acetate, a plastic that barely decays, and in mircoplastics disintegration. The filters can also up to 10 years, the chemicals continue to leak.”
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“In Ghent, there are already awareness campaigns, there can be GAS-fines to be written out for those cigarette butts on the ground throws, and restaurants are required the pavement 10 meters around their business clean. We even have rubbish bins with ashtray. And yet the ground was still full. Cigarette butts are the ‘ambetantste’ dirt, so I hear also at Ivago. They huddle in little corners between the joints of the paving stones, in rioolputjes and you get them there is difficult. Smoking is harmful to your health, cigarette disposal even once, not even to speak about the butts in the nature or in the water end up.”
Therefore, suggests Of Braeckevelt a deposit on cigarette butts. “Of course I know that we in Ghent are not just able to enter, it is not even a local authority. But I do think it is our duty at least to think about. A supra-local level approach would not only health, but also the cleanliness.”
