Australians have been urged to bin their butts as the plastic ends of cigarettes rank as the most pervasive source of discarded pollution.
More cigarette butts ended up in Australian waterways, bushland, parks and streets than any other litter item in 2025.
Making up nearly one quarter of all litter collected by Clean Up Australia volunteers for an annual survey, the pervasive source of waste unseated soft plastics as the most prevalent item tossed on the ground.
The chair of the environmental charity, Pip Kiernan, said many smokers did not realise the ends of their cigarettes were made of plastic.
“The cigarette butt is particularly nasty because it’s made up of cellulose acetate, so a plastic that doesn’t break down,” she said.
“It breaks up and it sheds microfibres and it leaches toxins into the environment, often ending up in the stomach of birds.”
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In the 35 years Clean Up Australia has been producing the litter report, cigarette butts have always been a problematic item and among the top three littered items.
A 2021 WWF Australia report found that of the nearly 18 billion cigarettes smoked each year, between 5.9 and 8.9 billion butts end up as litter.
While smoking prevalence in Australia is either declining or stable, depending on the data source, 2025 Roy Morgan research suggests both illicit tobacco and vapes have become more widespread than in the past.
Vapes are still becoming a more prominent source of waste despite a ban on the import and selling of the disposable e-cigarettes since mid-2024.
Despite the regulations, vapes are still in circulation and particularly hazardous when they land in the environment because they contain batteries and harmful chemicals.
Plastic continues to dwarf all other material types ending up as litter, making up more than 80 per cent of all counted items in the 2025 survey.
Consumption of plastic is increasing and about 250kg of it enters the environment as litter every minute, where it can be ingested by birds and marine life with potentially fatal results.
Plastic also remains a problematic waste stream, with just 14 per cent recycled and recovered.
There was some policy progress in 2025, with a voluntary soft plastics program introduced and container deposit schemes finally in place in every state and territory. But Ms Kiernan said national packaging reform was “absolutely overdue” in Australia to enforce mandatory rules on brands to make them responsible for the packaging they create.
“We’ve tried the voluntary targets, they haven’t worked,” she said.
“The thing with voluntary targets is you get free riders. So some people do the right thing and pay more to do the right thing with their packaging, and others don’t.”
The federal environment department is weighing up options for packaging reform to put to government
“We’d love to hear some announcement from the environment minister on that,” Ms Kiernan said.
