I live in a country where smoking has generally been on the decline for a while now but even still I see thousands of cigarette butts in just about any public place. They litter the sides of the road, bus shelters, alleyways, outside clubs, bars and pubs, public toilets, park benches and just about everywhere else. Its even extending to disposable vapes now as well.
For the most part, where I live doesn’t have that much of other kinds of litter about and is generally clean. And most public bins and all smoking areas have ashtrays and dedicated cigarette bins so it wouldn’t be hard to dispose of them properly like any other piece of rubbish and even then there’s often cigarette butts within sight of the bins and ashtrays.
Why then do people have a completely different approach for cigarettes?
It depends. Some people grew up tossing them and old habits die hard. That was less of an issue when it was some paper and leaf, but definitely more of an issue today with filters and such. In places where there’s more enforcement, people tend to carry pocket ashtrays and actually clean up after themselves. Improving enforcement and education would probably help reduce littering.
Back many moons ago when I smoked I preferred unfiltered Lucky Strikes. I generally put them in ash trays anywhere I could find one, but if one wasn’t available in the vicinity I had no qualms with dropping it and giving it a smash and twist with my whole to put it out and effectively destroy it. One rain, or even just a good fog, and it no longer existed. I agree I think this habit was continued when filters came into fashion and it’s just not equivalent at all.
They don’t see it as litter.
There’s a guy at work who would squat down and chain-smoke outside the building main entrance and littered cigarette butts all over the place.
I confronted him about it one day, and asked him to throw his butts away. Now he smokes by his car and that area of the parking lot is full of cigarette butts.
Fucking disgusting.
Cigarette butts are a huge source of microplastics in the environment. All my homies are judging that guy.
Because smokers are usually selfish assholes. And not terribly bright.
They don’t consider it littering. That the cigarette butt will somehow just magically degrade like a fallen leaf. It truly is remarkable how selfish smokers can be.
Honest question: what about cigarette butts makes them not biodegradable, exactly? To my vague understanding of what they’re made of, I know them to be cheifly comprised of paper and extract from dried leaves. Even after considering all the other additive compounds in cigs added for taste and effect, I can’t picture a lot of it by mass being forever chemicals like plastics.
That asked, I’m not convinced littering is acceptable even for biodegradable things. Far from all “biodegradable” materials completely disintegrate on a short timescale. Even IF cigarette butts degrade like plain paper and dry leaves, they wouldn’t do it quickly. If it’s a place where even a single smoker haunts multiple times a week, smoking and discarding multiple cigs at a time, they can pile up faster than they disappear.
And that’s not even considering all the toxins that would leech out from the things that will remain at elevated levels for as long as the littering continued.
They’re a huge source of microplastics in the environment. Tl;Dr they readily break down into microplastics and small plastic filaments.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34139503/
FTA:
Cigarette butts are dangerous pieces of plastic, but are usually not handled properly and consist of more than 15,000 detachable strands of plastic fiber. Discarded cigarette butts may be carried into rivers and lakes, and finally into the ocean. The plastic fibers will continuously release microplastic fibers into the environment. About 300,000 tons of potential microplastic fibers may enter the aquatic environment from this source per annum. Additionally, toxic substances, such as nicotine, carcinogenic tar, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, have strong toxic effect, which will cause serious damage to aquatic organisms.
The filters are made of plastic cellulose. Once upon a time I believe they were just cotton which would have been fine, but it’s been a long time since that was true.
At least some of them probably genuinely believe that, and AFAIK it is more or less true for filterless butts. Maybe we should replace some of the gore pics we have on cigarette packets with information about environmental effects …
Like how birds collect the butts and use them to prevent parasites in their nests?
more like how many animals eat then and get poisoned.
Yeah, that too.
My first time hearing the word “biodegradable” as a kid was after asking my dad why he threw his cigarette butts into the water when we were fishing.
“You’re biodegradable kid, so don’t ask so many questions”
As a former smoker who carried my cigarette butts until I found a trash can, I truly hate those assholes.
Well, I don’t think there’s a single answer.
I used to be a smoker. And it always pissed me off how cavalier other smokers were about just flicking a butt anywhere.
Having discussed it many times with other smokers, I gotta say the major reason for out is pure fucking laziness combined when apathy. People just don’t care, or think it doesn’t matter, and aren’t willing to put even the tiniest effort into not being assholes.
The next major reason is that smoking is basically burning a plant. There’s already a factor where you’re dropping ash, so there’s a predisposition to forgetting there’s a difference. And some people seem to think that because the cig was burning that it shouldn’t go in regular trash. Those folks are usually pretty good about using public ashtrays with a dedicated disposal container. Not all of them all the time, but more often than not.
I’m not saying I never left a butt behind (I love that phrase), but for me it was only when circumstances made it such that I wasn’t paying attention. High stress circumstances, and I wouldn’t be paying attention to what my hands were doing. I’d be done smoking, walking back to wherever and realize I didn’t have the butt with me.
There are portable options. My car didn’t come with an ashtray, but there are portable ones that cost less than a pack of cigarettes, even back when cigarettes were cheaper. There’s are also ones you can carry in a pocket or purse. I used to carry one in my pocket that was great because it was sealed well enough that you couldn’t smell anything from it.
But, barring a rare situation where the residual ember is too dangerous to stub out and then dispose of the little bit of tobacco left with a certainty of safety, there’s really zero excuse to not do that and at least carry your butt away to a receptacle of some kind, even if you’re in your own yard. But if things are that flammable, you shouldn’t be smoking to begin with.
Back when I would work the door as a bouncer at bars and clubs, I was kinda known for being pissy about it. I’d be smoking myself, see someone toss a butt and give them shit for it. “Why you fucking up my parking lot? Pick your shit up.” Benefit of being a bouncer and looking like a bouncer is you can get away with that kind of thing. Like, motherfucker, I’m standing right here next to a giant ashtray with a disposal bucket for the butts. Don’t just drop your trash. My boss at the one place said I was scaring customers. I said good, now the place won’t look trashy, and you can get customers that aren’t lazy assholes that leave the parking lot littered up. Besides, if a bouncer can’t put a little fear into lazy assholes, why do the job? That’s practically part of the benefits of the job lol.
But, yeah, the vast majority are lazy assholes. Not just the smokers, it’s anyone with something small enough they don’t think it’s worth any effort to dispose of properly. A single napkin, straws, straw wrappers, toothpicks. Cigs are just more frequent because smokers go through then in bigger numbers, so they pile up more obviously.
To add to this, it’s also modeled in our media.
Characters be flicking them everywhere, pitching them to the ground and decisively tamping them out with their foot, because that is what being cool and tough is about. The only time someone is depicted properly disposing of a cigarette is if there’s an ash tray they smish it in, preferably next to a glass of hard liquor or a beer.
How often do you see somewhere to put a cigarette butt? Sure people are selfish and lazy but if there was somewhere to put them in public spaces they would be used. People who smoke in the car and toss them out the window are dickheads though
And most public bins and all smoking areas have ashtrays and dedicated cigarette bins so it wouldn’t be hard to dispose of them properly like any other piece of rubbish and even then there’s often cigarette butts within sight of the bins and ashtrays.
I think this is a big part of it, but it’s also our mentality – in Japan, there are hardly any public garbage bins. Yet there’s hardly any litter.
At least from what I’ve seen in North America, people seem to think it’s someone else’s problem that there’s no garbage bin. But that’s not an excuse.
In the US a sizable chunk of the population watched those anti littering campaigns and said “you’re not the boss of me!” then made it a point to litter more. You tell an American what to do and you’ve got a 50/50 chance that they’ll do the opposite purely out of spite, even if they otherwise agree with you.
I hate this place more and more every day.
Well, you can’t just blindly throw cigarette butts in the garbage. You’ll start fires. Maybe not if you’re paying attention, but if you’re smoking outside 5x a day you’re bound to slip up eventually. You can only really put them in those specialized cigarette things, which there aren’t that many of
You’ve gotta strip it first. When my buddy came back from the military he taught to roll it around in the fingers until the remaining tobacco falls out, then the trash goes into the pocket until a bin is found.
Although, there’s not a class on that at all. I did my fair share of littering as a smoker. I still feel shit about it, which is why I bring my picker upper stick and an empty bucket with me on walks. It comes back full every time. Water bottles everywhere.
That’s what I do. Flick the tip and carry the butt to a garbage can.
There used to be ash trays in public spaces. Like, it was super common.
Since public smoking bans are more common, there are no ash trays anywhere. So people just throw their shit on the ground.
Removing ash trays isn’t going to make smokers go “oh well, guess I should stop smoking.” It makes them go “oh well, I guess there’s nowhere to throw this away, it’s going on the ground now.”
Because there aren’t any fucking public trash cans and noone is carrying that shit. Same reason you see nips everywhere.
And yet I can drink a soda and somehow not throw the bottle onto the ground. I’m a fucking hero.
Maybe just carry a tin for your butts since it’s not exactly a surprise that you have them.
He needs the Peltzer Smokeless Ashtray.
I have a Japanese friend who showed me these little zip up bags for carrying them until you find a trashcan, and they’re flame retardant. She said they’re pretty common over there, so should be widely available to order.
Nips?
Nipples?
Huh?
Nips are small single serving alcohol drinks
Apparently a regionalism I’ve seen attributed to New England
I am in new England, shiiii now I’m doxxed
wicked fuckin pissah
Hes ahp ohn tha ruff bud
For the most part, where I live doesn’t have that much of other kinds of litter about and is generally clean. And most public bins and all smoking areas have ashtrays and dedicated cigarette bins so it wouldn’t be hard to dispose of them properly like any other piece of rubbish and even then there’s often cigarette butts within sight of the bins and ashtrays.
If you can’t walk a little to dispose of cigarette butts, don’t smoke them.
Nicotine apparently rots the brain. I was at a bar yesterday and there was a shelf over the urinals and as many bins for snus packets as there were urinals. The bins were labelled in multiple languages that they were for snus packets. They were really obvious. And there were still snus packets in the urinals.
I could probably Google, but what on earth is snus?
Smokeless tobacco placed under the lip for the nicotine to be absorbed by the gums. If you’re familiar with dipping tobacco (“dip”), it’s the same concept, but the tobacco is processed differently and is usually in little teabag-like pouches for convenience.
It’s a type of swedish smokeless tobacco that has seen popularity elsewhere. It is something like chewing tobacco in a miniature teabag. Health risks are likely lower than other forms of tobacco, based on current (limited) evidence, both due to the lack of combustion and manufacturing process (pasteurized rather than curing and fermentation) but it’s still addictive because of the nicotine and shows an increase in cancer incidence.
Apparently, Swedish snus also has higher bioavailability of nicotine than American due to pH and moisture content.
Apparently, disgusting fuckers in the previous comment were spitting the little “teabags” out on the shelf above the urinals or in the urinals (I’ve seen the later).
I guess you can’t keep a cigarette butt in your pocket or purse like you can with a snack wrapper. Which forces people to dump them. Which creates a really bad habit, I mean you been tossing that shit yesterday when you didn’t find a bin, why should you care today? This is not an excuse though, just an attempt to understand the behavior which is what you’re asking
Portablepocket ashtrays. Very common in some places
Yeah I don’t get it either. I smoke and I’ve never thrown a cigarette on the ground in my life. It’s a shitty habit and you should try to at least not be a pig about it. I make my apprentices pick them up when I see them do it.
Are you a wizard?
No. I’m a carpenter. All carpenters aren’t wizards, it was just that Jesus feller.
Not “just”. But damn, he was good and left a grimoire.
He was a lich. He had necromancy mastered so well that he raised himself.
Because it generally takes a certain type of person to smoke and there happens to be quite a lot of overlap with the type of person who’s fine with littering.
I.e. If they don’t care about themselves, why would they care about anyone else or the environment around them?
Precisely. And I’d argue that secondhand smoke and its effects already applies as not caring about others or the general environment.
If they don’t care about polluting their own bodies, why would they care about littering?
Jumping in to say I quit smoking after 25ish years on New Year’s Eve and have not faltered at all. It was (for me at least) really easy when you truly want to.
I will 100% have a solitary joint on my birthday in May, though.
