For 2025 we are trying to organise a massive project. Starting small, with just 4, we want to have terracotta pots filled with fire retardant sand, painted beautifully, situated at grot spots for cigarette butts throughout the town. The first 4 will be on the esplanade (just waiting for the final permissions from DCC – STC and EDDC already on board). The pots will be painted with help from Sidmouth Coastal Community Hub.
The reason for this is the thousands of cigarette butts that we pick up on our monthly cleans. Smokers are clearly unaware of the damage these little things do. For information about the issues, keep reading! We are obsessed with them as people who would never litter anything else don’t seem to get that their butts don’t magically disappear if dropped on the street, in a gutter or drain. They are so light that they get easily washed into our river system and sea.
I have compliled this information from various sources including 5 ways cigarette litter impacts the environment
- Worldwide, about 4.5 trillion cigarettes are littered each year.
- Cigarettes make up more than one-third—nearly 38 percent—of all collected litter. Disposing of cigarettes on the ground or out of a car is so common that 75 percent of smokers report doing it.
- Littered cigarette butts leach toxic chemicals—such as arsenic (used to kill rats) and lead, plus residual nicotine, to name a few—into the environment and can contaminate water. The toxic exposure can poison fish, as well as animals who eat cigarette butts.
- a study has found one cigarette butt in a litre of water is enough to kill fish. Discarded cigarette butts — Science Learning Hub
- Aren’t filters biodegradable? NO! It may look like cotton, but 98 percent of cigarette filters are made of plastic fibers (cellulose acetate) that are tightly packed together, which leads to an estimated 1.69 billion pounds of cigarette butts winding up as toxic trash each year.
- Although cigarettes don’t break down naturally, they can gradually decompose depending on environmental conditions like the rain and sun. Estimates on the time it takes vary, but a recent study found that a cigarette butt was only about 38 percent decomposed after two years.
It’s litter.
It looks awful and dropping it on the ground is totally unnecessary.

More information:
Factsheet_OceanCare_Cigarette-Butts_May-2024.pdf

We hope you like our Terracotta Army initiative.
If you would like to have a pot on your business premises or in your front garden if you live in town, let us know and we will work together. If you have terracotta pots you no longer need and think we might be able to repurpose them, get in touch. If you are able to be part of a rota to empty the pots, (very low tec using a seive), also let us know! Thanks!!
Email info@sidmouthplasticwarriors.org or talk to us at one of our monthly cleans.