The One Thing We Still Pick Up — Over and Over Again

After years of organising urban cleanups across Singapore—from beaches and parks to urban streets and heartland void decks—we’ve come to expect a few constants: the occasional plastic bag, drink bottles, maybe even an abandoned umbrella. But the one thing that shows up every single time we do a cleanup?

Cigarette butts.

Tiny, persistent, and practically invisible unless you’re looking for them — but everywhere all the same. They line curbsides, wedge into pavement cracks, and hide in the grass around benches and bus stops.

And the numbers back this up. Over the past eight years, we conducted more than 150 urban cleanups across Singapore. Cigarette butts were present in 99% of them, and in nearly a third they were the most frequently collected item. In one cleanup, over 1,200 butts were picked up in just one hour.

What makes this especially frustrating is that while cleanups are meant to educate, engage, and build a sense of care for our environment, they’ve increasingly become exercises in picking up the same kind of waste over and over again. 

Most of the time, we’re just picking up someone else’s habit.

Not Just Waste — But Wasted Time

Think about this:

• Students on learning journeys spend hours hunched over sidewalks collecting cigarette butts instead of observing biodiversity or understanding waste streams.
  
  
• Volunteers who want to do good end up discouraged after realising they’re just cleaning up the aftermath of someone’s five-minute smoke break.
  
  
• Corporate teams burn CSR hours scouring car parks for butts when they could be used for strengthening local food systems, planting trees, or conducting workshops.

Is this really the best use of their energy, time and money?

It’s Time to Talk About Systems

We have been approaching this as a behavioural problem. This is partially true, but what we are not doing is examining the system that makes this kind of littering easy.

If we can ask a hard question:

Why are tobacco producers never part of the cleanup equation?

In Singapore, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes are already in place for electronic waste, and soon for packaging. These are products that take years to break down — or may never break down. Yet, while cigarette butts can persist in the environment for up to a decade, their producers are held to zero accountability.

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A Shared Responsibility (That Actually Isn’t)

Right now, here’s how the burden is distributed:

• Smokers get fined if caught.
  
  
• Enforcement officers play cat-and-mouse.
  
  
• Cleaners and volunteers do the grunt work.
  
  
• Everyone else walks by, a little annoyed but mostly resigned.

In a free economy like Singapore, one could argue that tobacco producers shouldn’t be penalised, since their revenue contributes to the economy. That’s true if we only consider economic value. But looking at the bigger picture—funds spent on educational campaigns, cleaning and maintaining public spaces, or tackling fires caused by careless cigarette butts, plus the time companies and students spend picking up litter—the equation isn’t so simple anymore.

If fridge manufacturers must offer take-back schemes, shouldn’t cigarette producers at least co-fund the removal of the waste they generate? From a social responsibility perspective, companies that profit from cigarettes should at minimum fund bins, support cleanup efforts, or promote behaviour change.

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A Smarter, Simpler Nudge

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Let me offer a small but powerful social intervention — one that has quietly worked in places like Japan:

Encourage smokers to carry a personal cigarette pouch.

This small, fireproof container fits in a bag or pocket, letting them hold butts until a bin is available.

It is not expensive or complicated. Ultimately, placing trash in a bin is really just decent civic behaviour. After all, if you’re the one smoking, shouldn’t you also clean up after yourself?

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What Companies Can Do (Beyond CSR Photos)

​​To companies with smokers on-site — and yes, this includes office buildings, malls, and food courts. Here are some ways to consider taking action:

• Create proper smoking zones, clearly marked and separated.
  
  
• Place ashtrays or designated bins within easy reach.
  
  
• Work with sustainability teams to monitor waste patterns and share responsibility.
  
  
• Make this part of office hygiene, not just “optional” behaviour.
  
  

Otherwise, you’ll continue paying for cleanups that don’t solve anything — and waste goodwill in the process.

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The Bigger Picture: Design for Responsibility

Ultimately, this is not just a smoker’s issue or a volunteer’s frustration. It’s a design failure, and with more people helping out in CSR, it will be a systems oversight if we allow the status quo.

We need to ask:

• Why has cigarette waste escaped scrutiny for so long?
  
  
• How can we hold producers responsible, the same way we hold them accountable for packaging, plastics, or e-waste?
  
  
• And what might it look like if we actually designed the whole smoking experience, from usage to disposal, more responsibly?
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Let’s stop playing cleanup theatre and make our cleanups more meaningful — and maybe even unnecessary someday.

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