Major European cities are pressuring the EU to ban the sale of cigarette filters. They denounce plastic mouthpieces that have no health benefit and represent the main source of street waste.
Brussels, Munich, Dublin and Genoa are among the municipalities that have joined the “No (Plastic) Filter” campaign, an initiative supported by the city of The Hague and the Dutch government, as well as other cities, water management authorities and environmental associations.
They argue that the principle of “extended producer responsibility” enshrined in European law — rules requiring tobacco manufacturers to take charge of waste management costs — has not reduced pollution caused by cigarette filters and that a total ban is necessary.
“Cigarette butts represent as much as 30% of all litter in the city of Brussels. Not only does this waste degrade our urban landscape, but its collection places an extraordinary burden on our cleaning teams,” said Anas Ben Abdelmoumen, municipal councilor in charge of public cleanliness, to POLITICO.
Several other cities in Belgium, Germany, Czechia, Hungary and Lithuania have also joined the campaign, which comes as the European Union proceeds with the revision of two major legislative texts likely to lead to a ban on cigarette filters — or at least the plastic they contain.
The European Commission's revision of the tobacco products directive is the opportunity to ban cigarette filters, campaign members argue. If they fail through this route, they could fall back on the upcoming revision of the single-use plastics directive to ban plastic in filters.
The World Health Organization is also in favor of banning or phasing out filters, stating they present no health benefit.
“The cigarette filter is the object most often discarded in public space, it contains plastic, it is the source of toxic environmental pollution and generates considerable costs for local authorities and society. Moreover, the filter does not make smoking less harmful,” argued Karl Beerenfenger, campaign manager and member of the Dutch NGO Fair Resource Foundation.
“It is a deceptive product, one of the biggest scams in recent history. The cigarette filter should never have been put on the market.”
The tobacco industry, however, maintains that filters do have a health benefit.
“There is no safe cigarette, with or without a filter,” stated Nathan Jones, head of European regulatory strategy at British American Tobacco. “However, studies show that filters help reduce exposure to certain toxic substances and help us comply with European legislation governing cigarette emissions. If there were a viable and scalable alternative, we would use it, but there isn't one.”
The ultimate polluter
In The Hague, costs related to cleaning cigarette butts discarded on public roads are estimated at around 2 million euros per year, according to the city's deputy mayor, Isabelle Broeders.
“From our point of view, the evaluation of the tobacco products directive represents an important opportunity to [ban cigarette filters]. We advocate a ban on all cigarette filters, regardless of the material used,” detailed Isabelle Broeders to POLITICO.
Most cigarette filters are made from cellulose acetate, a type of plant-based plastic that decomposes with difficulty. Biodegradable alternatives exist, but they are not widely used. Manufacturers have lobbied for cellulose acetate to be classified as a sustainable and biodegradable product and exempted from the single-use plastics directive.
The Tobacco Europe lobby opposed the possibility of the Commission restricting plastic filters, hoping the EU would focus instead on “awareness, effective enforcement of anti-litter rules and proportionate implementation of EPR [extended producer responsibility], while promoting innovation to offer viable alternatives in the long term”.
But Brussels and The Hague are both convinced that simply banning the plastic inside the filter would not be enough.
“Allowing alternatives to plastic creates a dangerous loophole: manufacturers could introduce new materials that escape technical definitions of plastic, while remaining practically as harmful, persistent in the environment and detrimental to public cleanliness,” raised Anas Ben Abdelmoumen.
The Dutch government, meanwhile, states that it is focusing on plastics in cigarette filters within the framework of the single-use plastics directive revision. “If this approach proved unsuccessful, this objective could also be achieved through the [tobacco products directive],” a spokesperson told POLITICO.
According to Yogi Hendlin, environmental philosopher and public health researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam, filters are a “prosthesis attached to the end of the cigarette” that people believe traps “the most harmful elements of smoke”.
“But the filter itself provides no health benefit,” he stated, and it has even been shown to increase the risk of lung cancer. “It does not filter any carcinogenic substances, and hardly does better in terms of filtration. It is essentially a purely aesthetic color change that tricks your mind into believing you are safer than you really are.”
Yogi Hendlin cited a landmark 2006 US court case in which it was established that tobacco manufacturers had misled smokers by marketing “light” and “low tar” cigarettes as less harmful products.
This article was first published by POLITICO in English, then edited in French by Jean-Christophe Catalon.
