BACKGROUND AND IMPLEMENTATION CHALLENGES: Globally, 766 million kilograms of cigarette butt waste are found annually, and two million tons of this is solid waste from cardboard and cigarette packaging. Indonesia, the country with the third largest number of smokers in the world, has experienced an increase in the number of adult smokers in the last ten years, with the prevalence of adult smokers reaching 28.62% in 2023 . Apart from that, a trend of increasing consumption of new tobacco products has also hit Indonesia since the last decade with the introduction of liquid and solid electronic cigarettes. There is evidence that packaging Electronic cigarettes that use batteries can explode when used. This condition increases the type of hazardous substance product as an explosive product. This policy paper aims to assess whether cigarette butt waste qualifies as hazardous waste based on its content and characteristics and to explore the need for regulatory changes to address its environmental and health impacts.
INTERVENTION OR RESPONSE: The drafting of this Policy Paper was carried out using the desk review method by reviewing regulations, institutional documents, journals, books, websites, and media portals ¹.
RESULTS AND IMPACT: Some of the characteristics of hazardous waste are explosive; oxidizer; easy to ignite; poisonous; dangerous; corrosive; irritating; harmful to the environment; carcinogenic; teratogenic; and mutagenic. The results of the study show that in terms of definition, content, and characteristics, cigarette waste meets most of the requirements for the hazardous waste category.
CONCLUSIONS: The results of the study show that in terms of definition, content, and characteristics, cigarette waste meets most of the requirements for the hazardous waste category. With the fairly high level of cigarette consumption in Indonesia, the environmental impact is quite significant without efforts to manage toxic and dangerous cigarette butt waste