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?
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.
As a former smoker who carried my cigarette butts until I found a trash can, I truly hate those assholes.
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”
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.
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.
Maybe it’s because smokers already have to make the decision to blow toxic smoke around where other people (most of them non-smokers nowadays) are likely to breathe it in - it’s pretty much an inherently anti-social activity nowadays, so the step to littering your smoking trash isn’t that big. Maybe related to broken window theory?
Came here to comment on how smokers seem to congregate specifically around doors to public buildings (businesses, hotels, restaurants, ect) despite having had legislation for years that requires them to be anywhere from 5-10 metres from any inlet to a building (air vent, hvac, door, window, etc)
Oh it gets worse than that.
Many times I’ve attempted, and failed, to get a group of smokers (that I was a part of) to move away from a nat gas pump/valve that even my smoker self could smell to be leaking.
If someone doesn’t care about themselves, why would they care about other or littering.
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.
Somehow they seem to think that one small cigarette butt is so insignificant that it doesn’t matter despite the fact that they can see these small cigarette butts literally everywhere.
When I smoked cigs, I was literally always the only person who’d always bother to properly throw away butts, even got a psuedo MGS4 style cigarette butt container for when no buttcans or trash cans were nearby.
A few people I’d smoke with would follow my lead.
Most of them just saw me giving a shit about trashing them properly and tell me to go fuck myself, removedg*t, etc.
Why are most smokers so frivolous, entitled and agressive with littering?
They don’t give a fuck.
About their own health, or anyone else’s, or the environment.
…
Other comments are saying smokers think the filters, the butts, are biodegradeable.
They aren’t.
You can only use that excuse if you’re rolling rollies or spliffs, or tapping out a spent pipe.
You can only use that excuse if you’re rolling rollies or spliffs
Even then, don’t be an asshole and just find a garbage can
Have you ever heard of “broken window syndrome?” It’s the idea that once there are a couple of broken windows on buildings in an area, quickly more will start getting broken. But if every window is intact, you will only get the occasional vandal being bold enough to break the first one.
It’s not scientific and may not even have any truth in it, but there is something to be said for the idea that if people see others doing something, they are more likely to go ahead and do it themselves.
To the point: if you see thousands of butts everywhere, smokers do too and probably consider it normal by now, and don’t care.
This only explains how things go from bad to worse. So who drops the first butt? Well: it’s the most selfish, lazy, inconsiderate guy around. There always is one.
Funny how all this adds up to the fact that we will inevitably herd behind the worst person around. Maybe that’s why we suck so bad as a species.
Maybe not the best example to use a racist police practice
I’m aware of the problematic policing.
The point being made here is “we feel license to do things we see lots of other people doing, and we hesitate to do things that we don’t see anyone else doing.”
This point can be made without dragging us into the racist policing. If you know a better name for it, by all means suggest one.
I don’t think using propaganda to try to explain reality is healthy.
Thanks for replying so i can block you
Eat shit and farewell.
