The NHS and Hull City Council have teamed up in an attempt to reduce the amount of smoking related litter in the City.
Bin The Habit! is a litter awareness campaign aimed at encouraging smokers to discard their cigarette ends responsibly. It highlights the fact that cigarette butts are litter and anyone caught littering the streets can be fined up to £60 for the offence.
The campaign, which has been developed and funded by the Humber Alliance Against Tobacco (HALT), is being piloted in and around Hull Royal Infirmary where hospital security guards will be patrolling the surrounding area issuing advice about littering to smokers. Hull City Council’s Community Wardens will be carrying out a similar operation in other areas of the city. Anyone caught discarding a cigarette end will be asked to pick it up and informed that in future, fines may be issued for similar behaviour. They will also be given a free “stubbie” – a specially designed container for collecting cigarette ends, and, if they are interested in quitting smoking, given information on how they can access the Stop Smoking Service.
Bin the Habit! posters will be located around the Hull Royal Infirmary as well as the Castle Hill Hospital sites for the next month.
Scilla Smith, Chairman at Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which manages the two hospitals said:
“We are very pleased to be a part of this campaign. Three years ago we took the decision to make our hospitals smoke-free zones. This has helped to reduce the number of smokers on our sites but we know that lots of people ignore our request not to smoke, which can make certain areas very unpleasant for non-smokers. Bin The Habit! helps us to get the message across to smokers in a different way.
“We have to sweep up an enormous amount of smoking-related litter every week simply because people don’t regard cigarette ends as litter. We hope that this campaign might change people’s attitudes.”
April Cundy is the Co-ordinator for HALT, she is delighted that this campaign is being so proactively embraced by the hospital trust and the local authority. She said:
“To many people cigarette ends are just not regarded as litter. If we see someone dropping sweet papers or crisp packets onto the street we are horrified, but cigarette ends just don’t seem to evoke the same response.
“We want people to realise the impact of their actions. Not only do discarded cigarette ends look unsightly but the clean-up costs are at great expense to the taxpayer”
Bin The Habit! is a litter awareness campaign aimed at encouraging smokers to discard their cigarette ends responsibly. It highlights the fact that cigarette butts are litter and anyone caught littering the streets can be fined up to £60 for the offence.
The campaign, which has been developed and funded by the Humber Alliance Against Tobacco (HALT), is being piloted in and around Hull Royal Infirmary where hospital security guards will be patrolling the surrounding area issuing advice about littering to smokers. Hull City Council’s Community Wardens will be carrying out a similar operation in other areas of the city. Anyone caught discarding a cigarette end will be asked to pick it up and informed that in future, fines may be issued for similar behaviour. They will also be given a free “stubbie” – a specially designed container for collecting cigarette ends, and, if they are interested in quitting smoking, given information on how they can access the Stop Smoking Service.
Bin the Habit! posters will be located around the Hull Royal Infirmary as well as the Castle Hill Hospital sites for the next month.
Scilla Smith, Chairman at Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which manages the two hospitals said:
“We are very pleased to be a part of this campaign. Three years ago we took the decision to make our hospitals smoke-free zones. This has helped to reduce the number of smokers on our sites but we know that lots of people ignore our request not to smoke, which can make certain areas very unpleasant for non-smokers. Bin The Habit! helps us to get the message across to smokers in a different way.
“We have to sweep up an enormous amount of smoking-related litter every week simply because people don’t regard cigarette ends as litter. We hope that this campaign might change people’s attitudes.”
April Cundy is the Co-ordinator for HALT, she is delighted that this campaign is being so proactively embraced by the hospital trust and the local authority. She said:
“To many people cigarette ends are just not regarded as litter. If we see someone dropping sweet papers or crisp packets onto the street we are horrified, but cigarette ends just don’t seem to evoke the same response.
“We want people to realise the impact of their actions. Not only do discarded cigarette ends look unsightly but the clean-up costs are at great expense to the taxpayer”
