Laughing gas ban to help environment
A leading environmental charity welcome the move to ban the substance.
Wigan based environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy have told us they welcome the Government's move to ban Nitrous Oxide.
Commonly known as 'laughing gas' the substance will be illegal from today with it becoming a controlled Class-C substance.
The move comes as part of the government’s Anti-Social Behaviour Action Plan.
Its also hoped that the gas's ban will see a reduction of the number of small metal canisters found littered on our streets.
Keep Britain Tidy CEO Allison Ogden-Newton OBE says these are a huge environmental burden: "They have no business being on the ground.
"They're mostly made of steel but unfortunately most local authorities don't have the technologies to be able to recycle them.
"Other than being littered and therefore working their way into the natural world, most of these many tens-of-thousands of canisters are finding their way into landfill."
These canisters are found on our streets so frequently one of the charity's volunteer groups collected over 2000 - which is enough to fill a skip.
Allison says while this is a positive more needs to be done: "Yes this is a first step in terms of Nitrous Oxide canisters.
"But there are so many other things that are destroying our environment.
"We've got things like disposable barbecues and disposable vapes, all of these things people need to ask themselves whether they need to consume.
"But they definitely, definitely, definitely need not to litter them."