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Date Published: 19/01/2023

ARCHIVED - Aguilas launches environmental initiative to stop people leaving cigarette butts on the beach

ARCHIVED ARTICLE -

The Town Council of Águilas and the CEIP Las Lomas school have launched the joint educational project “Don’t turn the beach into your ashtray”

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Aguilas launches environmental initiative to stop people leaving cigarette butts on the beach

It’s estimated that people in Spain smoke around 90 million cigarettes a day, and 15% of them end up on the beaches. That makes a terrifying total of 13.5 million cigarette butts in the sand and sea every day.

Bearing in mind that each cigarette butt takes a decade to break down, it’s hardly surprising that cigarette butts are the main type of litter to be found on Spanish beaches, threatening fish, ants, crabs and other local fauna.

Everybody is aware of the risks of smoking for human health, of course, but there is still “a great lack of knowledge” about “the harmfulness of this waste in the environment”, according to sources from the Environmental Education department at the Ayuntamiento de Águilas.

“Cigarette butts are not only ingested by mistake by fish and other animals, they also have the capacity to pollute water due to the components they contain, such as acetone, ammonia, arsenic, methanol, industrial solvents and even radioactive elements,” they say. “As a result, each cigarette butt can pollute between 8 and 10 litres of sea water. Cigarettes, not plastic, are the biggest pollutant on beaches.”

It’s for this reason that the local Town Hall in this Spanish coastal city has launched a project called “Don’t turn the beach into your ashtray” (‘No conviertas la playa en tu cenicero’), which involves educating children in the 5th and 6th years of Primary School, who are 10-12 years old, about the damage caused to the environment by abandoned cigarette butts on its 36 separate sandy beaches.

The local Councillors for Education, Francis Gallego, and Environmental Education, Ginés Desiderio Navarro, visited the Las Lomas school this week as part of the initiative to raise public awareness of the issue. Around 100 pupils are taking part in the ongoing programme, showing the commitment by the school, the town and the pupils themselves to looking after their environment, both locally and globally.

This project is included both in the Educational Programme ESenRED Region of Murcia, as well as in the programme to obtain Blue Flags for Águilas beaches. As part of this activity, a practical activity is scheduled to take place next week on the beach of La Colonia to learn more about how litter affects the coastal environment and to clean them up.

For more local news, events and visiting information go to the home page of Águilas Today

Image: Ayuntamiento de Águilas