Littering is not socially acceptable. People do it anyway. Somehow, it is more acceptable (or less unacceptable) to dispose of cigarette butts on the ground than other items. I am curious how this situation came to be, but the debate is about what we can do about it.
I would appreciate it if we could lay some ground rules for this thread: smokers have a right to exist, and to smoke, and they are not bad people for littering.* There are already pit threads about this, and if we need more you can start another one. I’d rather look at it as a once-acceptable behaviour that we, as a society, want to change going forward. I am happy to hear from smokers who think it is okay to litter, but please provide your justification.
I suspect that enforcing littering laws would only backfire. The massive anti-littering PR campaigns I remember from the 70s seem to have done a ton of good but bypassed smokers. Given the antagonism from non- and ex-smokers, I suspect that any efforts from that direction would also backfire. What is the solution? Is there something manufacturers can / should do? Should we resign ourselves to litter and step up streetsweeping?
*My own views about smoking are clear in other threads, but I’m hoping this one is more about disposal of butts / littering than smoking.
When I was a smoker, the vast majority of my butt-littering (ha!) was out the window of my car. Otherwise I would generally try to dispose of them in an appropriate receptacle, if conveniently available.
Part of the problem as I see it is the lack of such appropriate receptacles. In what is likely a misguided effort to discourage smoking, buildlings/establishments no longer have ashtray trash cans (similar to these; basically a normal outdoor trash can with a sand-filled ashtray on the lid), which used to be pretty much standard building entrance accompaniment. The result is, I don’t want to just toss it in a regular bin and potentially start a fire, nor, in the absence of a trash can, am I going to put it out and carry it around in my pocket, nor do I want to just start a pile of butts right outside of the door, so my only real choice is to flick it in the bushes or into the street. I’m not saying that’s right, but it’s why I did it.
My point is, when there is a proper place to dispose of butts, smokers will use them, but when there are not, they’re just going to flick them and walk away because honestly, and again I’m not saying it’s right, but honestly they don’t really give a fuck.
I don’t think it’s so much a matter that cigarette butts are more or less acceptable than other forms of littering, it’s that it’s a significant portion of litter and generally one of the grosser components too, it’s fairly common, and it’s identified with a portion of the population that is already stigmatized.
Consider this scenario, we have a smoker who has no problem with littering, he throws his snack wrappers on the ground when he’s outside just as he would his butts. The thing is, most of the time smokers smoke outside and can leave a dozen or more butts outside every day. If you’re snacking, you’re probably not doing as much of it as you are smoking cigarettes and you’re probably not doing most or all of it outdoors either. So even if they see it all the same, these people will generate a huge number of butts compared to other litter they generate. And, of course, anyone who sees someone throw a Snickers wrapper on the ground just sees them as a litterer, whereas seeing them throw the butt on the ground will immediately reinforce that smoker/litterer connection.
I think part of the thing is also the idea that butts are small and often falsely believed to be biodegradeable, so they seem less wrong than some plastic. Think about it, is throwing an apple core on the ground that will probably biodegrade within a week or two seem as bad as throwing a 20oz Mt Dew bottle on the ground? So I’d think by the same token, especially if they believe they’re biodegradeable, I can easily see someone thinking a small piece of trash is okay whereas a larger clearly unbiodegradeable piece is not.
Seriously, virtually every single day I see someone flick a butt out their car window, but I can’t remember the last time I saw a McDonald’s bag fly out of someone’s window. So it’s something that, right or not, gets reinforced often.
I think it is partly a holdover from a time when everyone smoked. I’m old enough to remember smoking on planes, in grocery stores, and just about everywhere else. When you had such a huge percentage smoking, tossing butts just became a norm. I know that when I first started smoking, I didn’t even think about it when I tossed my butts on the ground, partly because I saw a lot of other people do it. I don’t smoke anymore, but it does seem like the practice is less common, maybe just because less people smoke.
I’m afraid to say that this is just not true. I try to be as responsible as… well, as I feel like. When I go to the beach I not only pick up my own butts but I try to pick up a few more as well.
And here’s a tip for not starting a fire in a trash receptacle – put the cig out before throwing it away. Personally I knock the cherry off and step on it, but I know people that just step on the whole butt.
Having said that, I know some smokers who are complete slobs. There’s an outdoor area here where a lot of smokers would congregate. They thought nothing of leaving their butts on the sidewalk or in the planter. And there were dozens of them. I think this this was a place that gets cleaned every day.
And a few years ago, we had a bunch of snow storms. Plows would push all of the snow in the back alley into one big pile. When it started to melt in spring, it was easy to see that there were what looked like 10,000+ butts in it. It was pretty horrifying.
Yes, I know, but my point is that the path of least resistance would be to just chuck it into the bin, like I would if there were an ashtray on top or a bucket of sand or something like that. Stomping it out is most likely going to end with it staying where it’s stomped out, because the basic rule is if I’m finished smoking it, once it’s out of my hand, I’m done with it. Once again, not saying that’s right, but it’s how smokers think.
I was in the habit of throwing them in sewers, until I realized it’s just going to end up in the ocean that I swim in. I’m a slob, but I value the cleanliness of the oceans.
I agree that it’s a problem. I’ll call out other smokers that I see do it. I’ve broken more than a few people of the habit.
It’s littering, it’s nasty, just stop it. Step on your butt, pick it up, and stick it in your pack until you’re near a trashcan.
OTOH, I am also old enough to remember when everybody smoked and tossing butts was seen as fairly normal and no real problem. I’m certainly more sensitive to it than I was when I started smoking.
Part of the problem is the lack of receptacles. There used to be ashtrays everywhere, now you never see them. In most places, that leads to an increase in butts on the ground.
That’s not the entire problem, because some people are just fucking pigs, but it does contribute.
Think about it for a minute. If 5% of smokers are conscientious, 10% are pigs, and the other 85% are regular, lazy folks who’d use an ashtray if available but won’t go out of their way if not - 85% are going to produce a helluva lot more butts than 10%.
Thanks for the replies so far, esp. Blaster Master.
So what can be done about it? It sounds like the problem is twofold: unwillingness to pick up stomped butts (for fear of getting one’s hands dirty?) and a fear of trashcan fires and thus an unwillingness to use trashcans at all.
I smoked for more than 20 years (quit in January '12, praise be to Nicoderm mini-lozenges and Allen Carr’s Easy Way for same) and I find leaving butts on the ground completely unacceptable. Considering I smoked more than 150,000 cigarettes in my lifetime (no exag) I’m sure I did it and more than a few times, but usually I’d “field strip” it (extinguish the cherry, pop out the remains of hte tobacco and ash [which will blow away]) and I’d put the actual butt into my pack until I got to an ashtray. If I had gotten a ticket one of the times that I did stomp it out (and I never did) I’d have completely deserved it.
I currently work at a 100% smoke free campus; the only place you can smoke without getting a ticket is inside of your vehicle, and my understanding is that’s rigorously enforced. I still see cigarette butts everywhere- nothing like at a smoking-allowed campus, but still more than you’d think. Some folks is just plain trashy.
That said, unless you are going to ban smoking 100% at a shopping center/school/office building etc. AND enforce it, I think one of the stupidest things that shopping centers and schools and other buildings can do is not have ashtrays. If people can smoke they’re going to and if there are no ashtrays then you’re going to have 500 pounds of cigarette butts laying around, and during droughts hope that nobody puts one out on the pine straw around the plants (which I have known to happen not just once but several times over the years).
As a teenaged smoker I thought filters were cotton. Some people “stripped” their filters and discarded the disassembled threads on the ground, thinking they were being quite ecological.
I remember the first time I accidentally put the wrong end in my mouth and lit the damn filter. WTF!@?? this isn’t cotton! It freaking MELTED!
I did research and learned that while filters remove tobacco tars they add a whole slew of nasty chemicals caused by hot smoke drawn through synthetic fibers and decided it was healthier to smoke unfiltered and did so. (A few years later I quit altogether).
It may be that cigarette butts last much longer than many other forms of litter. A candy wrapper is going to blow away, or be picked up by someone. Cig butts just stay in one place and don’t degrade much. One single smoker who commonly goes to a specific “smokko” area can leave a lot of butts in a month.
Let’s say there are 10 smokers, 9 of whom never litter. They all go twice a day to the same place to smoke. One of them always tosses their butts. After a month, there are 60 butts lying on the ground in a confined area. All from one guy.
I noticed this effect at a bus stop several years ago. Cig. Butts started to show up. Same brand. They accumulated. After 3 weeks there were more than two dozen on the ground at the (formerly) pristine bus stop. Finally, I saw the young lady who was doing it - I pointed at the butts on the ground and said “These are all yours, aren’t they? They don’t disappear you know.” She got embarrassed, but I noticed that she never did it again. She was just unaware - they were invisible to her.
This may be horrible stereotyping on my part and if so I apologize, but it seems to me that these days given the societal pressures against smoking, that those who do smoke are more likely to be those who a bit more free spirited and more resistant to being told how to live their lives. This might in some cases also extend to not caring about whether or of they litter.
Seriously, though the logistics would be difficult, a free pack of cigs for every carton’s worth of returns would do the trick nicely, I think. You’d get the bums picking up all the extra butts from the non-frugal/lazy litterers that didn’t care to participate.
Actually, it’s at least a fourfold problem. Add 3) laziness/slobbiness that leads people in general to litter, combined with an addictive habit that provides a never-ending supply of objects to litter with, and a probable 4) a way to get back at society for enacting anti-smoking legislation.
There are plenty of ways to dispose of cigarette butts (most cars still have this thing called an ashtray (or other compartments that can serve as one - line 'em with tinfoil if you’re too fastidious to contemplate burn marks on the plastic), and there are plenty of garbage receptacles around in public places (I somehow manage to find one when I need to dispose of litter.). If there’s not one immediately available, they make paper cups and bags which can be used by someone who cares to take a bit of trouble not to make a mess.
As long as there are piggish people, there will be those who fling their cigarette butts out of car windows, let their dogs shit everywhere without picking it up, or toss their beer cans and empty bottles on my lawn. Public education and shaming go only so far.
A volunteer Taser-equipped anti-litter squad sounds like fun, if we could get our local governments to agree to them.
A side note - disposing of tobacco in this way, even when smoked, poses a risk of transmitting agents like tobacco mosaic virus, a serious pathogen on some crops of economic importance. This is why you will see signs in greenhouses noting that smoking is forbidden.
Former smoker here. I used to toss butts on the ground because 1) I didn’t really think it was a big deal, 2) I didn’t have an ashtray in my car, and 3) my workplace had cigarette receptacles, but put them a ridiculously long distance from the door. The legal smoking limit here is only 30 feet away from entrances, and I wasn’t about to walk a quarter of a mile to properly dispose of a cigarette butt when I only had 15 minutes off the clock (5 of which were spent walking to/from my desk and using the bathroom). And I’ve never been capable of smoking while walking, because of a sensitive gag reflex (had to stop for every puff). I would rather have used a butt receptacle to dispose of them, but businesses who refuse to make butt disposal convenient get to clean mine off the ground.
I don’t smoke anymore so it’s a non-issue. If I ever take it back up, though, I’d start using an ashtray in my car. Otherwise, I’d worry about flicking one out the window into a motorcyclist or convertible or someone’s open window, whereas I never really thought about that before I quit.
There is so much rubbish generated by a single pack of fags - the packet’s plastic wrap (3 parts), the foil top, the pack itself, the 20 butts, the ash, and the smoke - all essentially refuse. The last two of that list it is still socially OK to impose on the general environment with no sanction. My belief is that then transfers, by a kind of category extension, to the previous item in the list, the butts, also being part of each cigarette.
So basically if it’s OK for me to litter the environment with my smoke and my ash from one cigarette, it’s OK to do it with the butt from that same cigarette.
About 7 years ago, I had a roommate who smoked. This is what our front yard (just past our porch,) was like when the snow started to melt.
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From what I can tell, it’s sheer laziness more than anything. Go downtown here on any night (especially Friday and Saturday,) and there are lots of people just outside the front doors to bars smoking. I won’t say every bar has an ashtray out front, since I don’t know for sure, but most certainly do, yet most smokers still toss their butts on the ground. The ashtray is five feet to your left, stop being a douche.
And the amount of people I see tossing butts out of their car windows is staggering. Though I’ll admit it is kind of cool to see at night…but it’s not worth the litter.
