According to a report in The Irish Times, new legislation driven by EU efforts to reduce plastic waste will require tobacco companies to pay millions of euros in street cleaning costs in Ireland from January 1, 2023.
According to the national garbage pollution monitoring system, cigarette butts account for half of all garbage and are the "biggest garbage hazard".
Starting this year, tobacco companies will bear some of the cleaning costs. The total amount of responsibility will not be determined until data on the contribution of cigarette butts to garbage collection fees in 2023 is collected.
Bernie Kiely, a senior environmental official in the circular economy, stated, "This forces tobacco companies to reconsider their products and the costs involved in bringing them to market, as they would be responsible for paying for waste cleanup and recycling. What we are doing is returning the full lifecycle costs to the tobacco producers who initially introduced them to the market.
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