A report by the National Litter Pollution Monitoring System has found that pedestrians are the worst litterbugs.
Pedestrians are responsible for 42% of litter, and cigarette butts make up more than half of all litter on Irish streets.
Environment Minister Richard Bruton says we could half the litter on our streets if cigarettes were disposed of properly:
"It does point to the need to look at this area of pollution. We have become very casual in the discarding of cigarette butts compared to sweet papers which aren't anything as prevalent an area of littering. We need to think about that as a community."
According to smoker's rights group Forest Ireland, more public ash trays are needed to combat cigarette litter.
Spokesperson John Mallon says the Government needs to be more accommodating to smokers:
"It isn't the smoker's fault. They introduced the ban. Normally smokers would have been indoors. They don't provide anywhere for them to light a cigarette. I don't know what they expect."
However, the new litter survey revealed a significant decrease in chewing gum litter - from 15.15% in 2016 to 8.0% in 2017.
Potential reasons for this could be 2017 funding for gum removal, the installation of a ‘gum resistant’ paving and an increased educational effort regarding litter pollution including gum litter.
