European cities demand total EU ban on cigarette filters

BRUSSELS — Major cities across Europe are calling on the EU to ban the sale of filters in cigarettes, saying the plastic-based stubs have no health benefits and are the single biggest cause of urban litter. 

Brussels, Munich, Dublin and Genoa are among the city governments that have joined the No (Plastic) Filter campaign, an initiative driven by the Dutch government, along with local municipalities, water authorities and green groups.

They argue that the EU’s “extended producer responsibility” schemes — rules requiring tobacco companies to pay for cleanup — have failed to curb pollution from cigarette filters and that an outright ban is needed.

“Cigarette butts account for a staggering 30% of all litter in the City of Brussels. This waste not only blights and degrades our cityscape, but cleaning it up places an extraordinary burden on our sanitation crews,” the city’s alderman for public cleanliness, Anas Ben Abdelmoumen, told POLITICO. 

Several other cities in Belgium, Germany, Czechia, Hungary and Lithuania have also joined the campaign, which comes at a pivotal moment as the EU revises two major laws that could lead to a ban on cigarette filters — or at least the plastic they contain.

The European Commission’s revision of the Tobacco Products Directive is an opportunity to ban cigarette filters, the campaigners argue. If it falls short, the upcoming revision of the Single-Use Plastics Directive could offer a second chance by banning the plastic inside them. 

The World Health Organization also supports banning or phasing out filters, stating they provide no health benefit.

“The cigarette filter is the most littered item, contains plastic, causes toxic environmental pollution and poses enormous costs for municipalities and society. In addition, the filter does not make smoking less harmful,” said the campaign’s leader Karl Beerenfenger, from Dutch NGO Fair Resource Foundation.

“It’s a misleading product, one of the biggest frauds in recent history. The cigarette filter should have never been introduced.”

Tobacco companies, however, argue filters do serve a health purpose.  

“There’s no such thing as a safe cigarette, with or without a filter,” said Nathan Jones, head of EU regulatory strategy at British American Tobacco. “But research shows filters help reduce exposure to certain toxicants, and they help us meet EU laws which regulate cigarette emissions. If there was a viable, scalable alternative, we’d use it, but there isn’t.”

In The Hague, annual cleanup costs for cigarette butt litter are estimated at around €2 million, according to the city’s deputy mayor, Isabelle Broeders. 

“From our perspective, the evaluation of the Tobacco Products Directive represents an important opportunity to [ban cigarette filters]. We advocate a ban on all cigarette filters, regardless of the material used,” Broeders told POLITICO. 

Most cigarette filters are made from cellulose acetate, a type of plant-based plastic that doesn’t break down easily. Biodegradable alternatives exist but aren’t widely used. Producers have pushed for cellulose acetate to be classed as a sustainable, biodegradable product and exempted from the Single-Use Plastics Directive.

Tobacco Europe pushed back against the possibility the Commission will restrict plastic filters, hoping the EU focuses instead on “awareness-raising, effective enforcement of anti-littering rules, and proportionate EPR implementation, while enabling innovation to deliver viable alternatives over time.”

But both Brussels and The Hague are convinced that banning just the plastic inside the filter wouldn’t go far enough.

“Allowing non-plastic alternatives creates a dangerous loophole: Manufacturers could introduce new materials that bypass technical definitions of plastic while remaining virtually as harmful, persistent in the environment, and detrimental to public cleanliness,” said Abdelmoumen. 

The Dutch government, meanwhile, says it is focusing on plastics in cigarette filters through the Single-Use Plastics Directive revision. “Should this prove unsuccessful, it could also be achieved via the [Tobacco Products Directive],” a spokesperson told POLITICO. 

Yogi Hendlin, an environmental philosopher and public health scientist at Erasmus University Rotterdam, said filters are a “prosthetic on the end of the cigarette” that people believe filters out “the worst parts of the smoke.” 

“But the filter itself provides zero health benefits,” he said, and have even been shown to increase the risk of lung cancer. “It doesn’t filter any of the things that cause cancer, and it doesn’t even do much in terms of filtering. It’s basically a cosmetic color change that tricks your mind into thinking that you’re safer than you actually are.”

Hendlin pointed to a landmark 2006 U.S. court case that found tobacco companies had misled smokers by marketing “light” and “low-tar” cigarettes as less harmful products.