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?
ok, quick story, i grew up in a house where my dad was a militant smoke, by that i mean he smoked filterless pall malls, had to be 2 3 packs a day, for my entire life, he switched up to newports later on. regularly in the 70’s and 80’s when he filled up his ashtray, he’d pull the side of the road and tap out all the butts, right there, on the road. different time. different place. almost an alternate universe compared to now. after moving to the west coast i was riding around with a friend, i became a smoker in my early teens, as if that was some big surprise, so i was riding around in a beater i had bought, and pulled over on the side of the street, and tapped my ashtray out, my friend just about had a fucking heart attack. shamed me so thoroughly i never did that again. been about 10 years now since i stopped smoking, managed to switch smoking 2 packs of marlboro reds for vaping, and i’m pretty pleased with it. now i notice the cigarette butts strewn around, and am glad i’m no longer part of that particular problem. i guess the simple answer is, what many others in this thread have mentioned, if you don’t respect your own body, you aren’t going to respect the natural world around it.
Hey that’s an awesome story, thank you for posting. I’ve found I inherited a lot of bad habits as well, that I never thought about until confronted later in life. Always gotta be willing to make a positive change