This summer, keep your butt off Mayo beaches!

This month, Clean Coasts has worked with Mayo-based community group Keep Our Beaches Clean to raise awareness about issues and solutions regarding smoking-related litter.

In an event that took place on May 13 last, Keep Our Beaches Clean and Clean Coasts installed informational stickers on cigarette bins that had been placed on several beaches and popular spots in the Louisburgh area.

May 31 is World No Tobacco Day, a day in which the World Health Organisation highlights the harmful impact tobacco has on human health and our environment. Tobacco growing, manufacturing and use poisons water, soil, beaches and city streets with chemicals, toxic waste, cigarette butts, including microplastics, and e-cigarette waste.

Ireland’s bathing season starts on June 1, and Clean Coasts are launching a campaign asking people to dispose of their smoking-related litter correctly to protect our environment and marine life.

Ireland has amazing beaches and coastal landscapes, including 94 Blue Flag and 65 Green Coast Award sites, and everybody can play a key role in protecting them.

In Ireland, cigarette butts are the most common item found on Ireland’s beaches and they account to for almost 50% of all discarded waste in the country. For the past several years, cigarette butts have been the top litter item found on Irish beaches during the Big Beach Clean, the end-of-bathing-season call to action sponsored by Irish business Cully and Sully.

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 hosting clean-ups have noticed that incorrectly discarded vapes are also increasing. Vapes are made of materials such as plastic, rubber and metal that don’t break down naturally, and 1.3 million single-use vapes are thrown away every week.

Clean Coasts are highlighting the work of community groups to tackle smoking litter on their local beach, and hope to inspire other groups and communities to take action in their local community. One such group that worked to create awareness locally about smoking-related litter is Keep Our Beaches Clean in Louisburgh. The members took the time to raise awareness within their community about the impact of smoking-related litter and why it should be disposed of correctly, with pilot projects that entailed the installation of cigarette bins and informational stickers in key spots in their local area.

Louise Hastings from Keep Our Beaches Clean commented: “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.”

Clean Coasts released resources for people to learn more about the issue and create their own campaign. Moreover, they are inviting Clean Coasts groups and communities living in an area affected by the issue to get in touch if they would like to host a similar initiative on their local beach, by visiting their website at www.cleancoasts.org.