Butt Out
2 BILLION cigarette butts hit the ground every day. Our world has become one big ashtray and I’m pissed off.
I recently spent an hour sweeping up butts around one (yes, only one) bench in the small park near my house – see photo. A big smelly pile of butt garbage just a few feet away from a garbage can. It seems most smokers do not think butts are actually garbage. People who normally would not ‘litter’ just toss their butts out the car window or flick them on the ground.
I cringe at every film scene that uses this casual act of littering to punctuate an emotion or segue to another scene. It is so common to see that it now actually seems normal, o.k., harmless. Far from true.
The city I live in finally made it illegal to smoke inside most buildings so now everyone smokes outdoors but no genius has realized it might be a good idea to have ashtrays outside for the many butts which litter the doorways, lawns, sidewalks, gutters all over the city. People smoke outside bars, restaurants, coffee shops – I think it should be the responsibility of those businesses to provide disposals and to clean up the ground. It’s their customers, their business. C’mon.
Yes, I do talk to smokers when I see them throw their butt on the ground and I ask them to please ‘pick it up’. As you can imagine sometimes that works, sometimes not. It’s bad enough that non-smokers have to take a deep breath and run the smelly gauntlet when entering public buildings; it’s worse when we have to deal with the remains of this dirty habit. A few times I’ve actually seen someone open their car door, dump a full ashtray on the ground and drive away. Another proud human moment.
The butts are not only ugly and filthy – they are a huge environmental hazard. News Flash – butts are NOT biodegradable. NOT. They may seem small and harmless but guess what they contain – tar, arsenic, vinyl chloride, acetone, mercury, lead, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide. Butts can take up to 15 years to disintegrate and when they do, they release all their poisons into the ground. Those that get into storm drains end up in our rivers, lakes, and oceans where fish mistake them for food. Birds use them for nesting material and pets think they are treats. All deadly mistakes.
http://whyquit.com/whyquit/a_butts.htm
Talk to smokers. Ask communities to provide disposals. Beg businesses to act responsibly. Sweep them up. Someone may be watching and who knows, they may get it and actually change.
May 12th, 2010 at 1:02 am
found your site on del.icio.us today and really liked it.. i bookmarked it and will be back to check it out some more later
May 15th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
I just talked to “my smoker” yesterday! And suggested that maybe tossing the butt is not so helpful to our environment, one whose demise he laments…..
July 21st, 2010 at 11:14 am
Well Sue, I saw the ashtray dump myself a number of years ago in a parking lot just before a guy went into the pizza joint we were just coming out of. I challenged him about what he was doing. He mumbled something about how he was a janitor and blah blah blah in broken english. I had no idea what he was talking about. But if he was a janitor, he should have more consideration and yes, brains. After he went into the restaurant, I grabbed a little piece of cardboard I found laying nearby, scooped up the butts, and dumped them on his windshield and in his wipers. I’m guessing if a window had been open, I would have dumped them inside. Needless to say, my parents were a bit ‘shocked’, and I’m sure realized that would not be the end of my anger at the world.