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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
As a former smoker who carried my cigarette butts until I found a trash can, I truly hate those assholes.
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, fagg*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
