Cigarette butts are polluting Dublin's favourite walking and swimming spots.
The discarded ends account for a whopping 60% of all street litter in the capital. The number of cigarette butts found during the Big Beach Clean in Dollymount, Clontarf, Skerries, Sutton, Malahide, The Royal and Grand Canal, The Liberties, Lucan Park, Tallaght, and more saw a major increase last year.
One community group, in particular, Clontarf Tidy Towns, removed around 50kg of litter on their Big Beach Clean event, including 2,700 cigarette butts. This type of litter is the most common item found on Ireland’s beaches and they account for almost 50% of all discarded waste in the country.
Read more: Portobello clean-up planned after litter chaos around the canal
Cigarette butts and filters are often assumed to be biodegradable, but in fact, one cigarette butt might take over a decade to decompose. Cigarette filters are made of a plastic called cellulose acetate, which does not biodegrade and can remain in the environment for very long periods of time in the form of microplastics.
Globally littered cigarette butts amount to an estimated 0.3 million tons of microfibers released per year. When ingested, the hazardous chemicals in microplastics cause long-term mortality in marine life, including birds, fish, mammals, plants and reptiles.
According to research, just one cigarette butt per litre of water leaches enough toxins to kill half the freshwater or saltwater fish exposed to it. In addition to cigarette butts, volunteers also noticed a rise in incorrectly discarded vapes.
Keep Our Beaches Clean spokeswoman Louise Hastings said: "We were having a big issue with butts being thrown in a few areas in particular, the pier, the car park, the toilets and some hot spots on the beach. The volunteers were spending so much time picking up the butts, it's so tedious.
"We decided to apply for a grant in the hope of purchasing the bins. We are hoping this solves the issue and the volunteers won't have to spend so much time breaking their backs picking them up."
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