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Amel Talha, 18, came up with the hashtag after seeing her friend post a picture of a plastic bottle he had filled with cigarette butts to Twitter.

She said: “I thought it would be cool if we could do it on a larger scale, so that everyone could contribute to the ecological cause with a small gesture.”

Miss Talha and her friends adopted the hashtag on their Twitter pages and used it in tweets they made.

The hashtag went viral and thousands of people around the globe have been inspired to follow in their litter-picking footsteps.

In France, insurer Allianz has pledged to plant a tree for every filled bottle of butts.

Miss Talha said: “I didn’t expect it to be thousands, not only in France, but also in England, the US, Portugal, Germany, Spain and so on.

I am very proud of it and above all, it gives me hope, the hope that we can still change our ecological destiny.”