There was an article in the The Oregonian (our local paper) the other day about last year's one day effort to clean up the world's beaches. What was interesting was how prominently cigarette butts figured in the story. While they don't make up much of the mass (probably about 0.1%) they are the most numerous kind of litter the pickers found.
So this idea popped into my head: what we need is a personal cigarette butt receptacle, a butt collector. Something a smoker would carry with them just like the pack of smokes and a lighter, that would give them a place to stash the butt when they were done with it.
Well, if it's such a good idea, someone else has probably already thought of it. A little web search turned up an anti-cigarette-litter site, which had a link to a company that sells personal ashtrays, but that wasn't quite the ticket. A little more looking turns up a bunch of public service type videos complaining about people throwing out their cigarette butts. Well, that's very nice, but it doesn't really help.
What we need is some good examples. We need some videos of people disposing of their cigarette butts properly. If we are really serious about this, we need to make it easy for people to dispose of their cigarette butts. Give them an empty receptacle every time they buy a new pack, and let them drop off their old one. Give them a nickel for each butt they turn in. That might work. Pay them a dollar off their next pack of smokes for each full receptacle they turn in.
In terms of the state of human affairs in the world today, this is pretty small potatoes, but it is one problem we might be able to do something about.
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4 comments:
So send gay sex fiends to the beach
they like collecting butts ;-)
Geez, everybody's a comedian today. First it's Dustbury (on my previous post), now you. Well, I hope you guys are happy.
It bothers me to see smokers ditching their butts anywhere they please. We would fine someone for throwing a small piece of a wrapper on the ground, so these litterers should be fined as well. It's not that challenging for someone to find a place to leave their butts.
At our college, we have receptacles and students will still throw their butts on the ground NEXT to the receptacles. Total lack of respect for our environment. -ST
Cigarette Litter - An unseen environmental danger
I would like to draw attention to a problem which is largely forgotten.
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Cigarette litter has impacted on our environment to such an extent that it has become a focal point for top level governmental discussions worldwide.
Visual aids used to educate smokers about the harmful effects of their carelessness are easy enough, but proving to be ineffective. Innocently perhaps, smokers are generally unaware of the damage their littering causes the environmet.
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Worldwide indoor smoking bans, whilst valid and necessary have had the counter effect of forcing millions of smokers to smoke outside. With this comes unsightly, unpleasant and unhealthy littering, as the butts will generally be cast off wherever they have finished their cigarette.
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