The new target of the Generalitat de Catalunya to create new environmental taxes, according to the draft of the waste law being prepared by the Catalan Executive, is cigarette butts.
A new law as of 2024?
Information provided by the Economist states that the application of this law will not be a reality until mid 2024. Until then, one of the measures tobacco users could take to reduce what they pollute by smoking is, for example, vapes and e-cigarettes.
Many vape shops are springing up in vape shops in Barcelona and vapes, particularly disposable vapes, are becoming more and more fashionable.
Returning to the cigarette butt tax, the idea, which will be submitted for public information in early July, is to make the smoker pay a deposit of twenty cents per cigarette, four euros per pack, reimbursed by the Generalitat when the cigarette butts are returned.
This will be done at tobacco shops and recycling points, which must be equipped to provide this new service at least one year after the law comes into force.
The operational and legal doubt that exists is whether the tobacconists will be able to take over this activity once the law has to come into force.
Prevent cigarette butts from ending up on the ground or in the sea.
In an interview for “El Periódico”, the director of l’Agència de Residus de Catalunya, Isaac Peraire, said that “the objective is to avoid that, as it has happened until now, seventy percent of the cigarette butts generated in Catalonia end up thrown on the ground or dumped into the sea”.
Let’s do the math: a “standard” smoker who returns ninety percent (more or less) of the cigarette butts he has smoked in a year, at 20 cents per butt, would recover around 927 euros each year.
The Department of climate action, food and rural agenda, with Teresa Jordà, as director, would receive 154.44 million, which, according to them, would be allocated to clean-up and awareness-raising work.
In spite of this, it is not clear whether the new waste law in which the measure against cigarette butts is integrated does not even pass the sieve of the courts as regards its jurisdictional validity.
Does a rule collide with state regulation?
Economist sources believe that the rule is in collision with the state regulation envisaged by the government. The regulation will also oblige tobacco manufacturers to take care of the waste. The Mesa del Tabaco, an institution that groups this industry, warns that this type of measures allied to responsibility are competencies of the state and still adds: “this is reflected in the recently approved Law on Waste and Contaminated Soils for a Circular Economy…”
There is another factor that may cause the rule not to be approved.
The law does not allow the storage of products that give off odor and may interfere with the conservation of tobacco, or the health of the persons storing them. So the Gremi d’Estanquers de Catalunya also claims difficulties in storing cigarette butts.
As a consequence, the cigarette butt tax can also be expected to increase tobacco smuggling and is predicted to cause the residue to become more valuable than the original contents of each pack of cigarettes.
So the best way to reduce the waste generated from cigarettes and tobacco in general is to switch to electronic tobacco.
Vapes a more technological and ecological way of “consuming tobacco”.
There are more and more ways of consuming tobacco in a “more technological” way. Electronic cigarettes, vapes or disposable vapes are more environmentally friendly solutions and technically not so harmful to health.
The vapes have for years cut an important space in the market and represent for all intents and purposes a ‘real alternative to tobacco consumption although electronic cigarettes do not contain tobacco, many of them contain nicotine, which originates from tobacco.
That said, even if the tax on cigarette butts is not approved, it is best to be careful where you throw the cigarette butt and if you feel like trying, buy a vape because the benefits over traditional tobacco are many, for example you will not smell of tobacco again and also the smoke from the vape disappears very soon and as long as we do not inhale, the vapor does not produce smoke as long as it is not used.
