CIGARETTES are not just bad for your health but also for the environment.

The sight of a cigarette butt is a common one, not just in Worcester but across the country and even the world.

It is so common, people walking past don’t even notice them most of the time.

But people might think twice about dropping their cigarette ends if they knew that they actually account for more than 40 per cent of litter in the UK.

In fact, 120 tonnes of cigarette-related rubbish is dropped every day in the UK.

A calculation by Worcester City Council estimated that the three or four miles of roads in the city centre had millions of cigarette butts dropped on them.

As part of the Take Pride in Worcester campaign, your Worcester News, the city council and VisitWorcester want people to think twice before dropping litter – be it a cigarette or a crisp packet.

John Bond, environmental protection officer at the city council, said: “I would think that cigarettes are our number one problem and if not, they are certainly in the top three.

“Every area you go to in the city you get cigarette butts and because they are so small, they are very difficult to clean up.

“The butts stay there when you sweep the roads – they just get under benches, in tree grates and all along the sides of buildings.

“They tend to gather in tourist-sensitive areas, such as the river bank, which is why we get complaints about the city being scruffy.”

Not only are cigarette butts an eyesore, they are also poisonous.

A cigarette butt contains up to 4,000 chemicals, including hydrogen cyanide and arsenic, and can contaminate up to eight litres of water.

Not only that, but they have also been found in the stomachs of fish, birds and other marine animals as the creatures often mistake them for food.

Mr Bond said: “We do a survey of the city centre three times a year to get a scientific understanding of how clean it is and it is always the cigarette butts which let us down.”

Worcester City Council has a number of cigarette butt bins to give away to local businesses. Any company interested can contact Malcolm Cox, head of operations, on 01905 722468.