BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Can we call about people who throw their cigarette butts on the ground even if they're not necessary driving?

There's already a dangerous drivers hotline: 1-800-382-5633

stefb- that's a real sore point with me- I regularly tell people the are littering when they toss their butt. I have sometimes picked them up and handed them back to them, saying "Hey, you dropped this". I have fantasized about picking up a car tossed butt and throwing it back into the car. I am glad the littering hotline has returned- I will start using that regularly. Unfortunately, I suspect a lot of drivers will get that letter saying they littered and think it was in error as they never litter, they just throw their cigarette butts out the window.

In college I regularly volunteered to clean the beaches in Erie up and it angered me that it was common to pick up 500 cigarette butts in a 5-10 foot area.

helen s wrote: stefb- that’s a real sore point with me- I regularly tell people the are littering when they toss their butt. I have sometimes picked them up and handed them back to them, saying “Hey, you dropped this”. I have fantasized about picking up a car tossed butt and throwing it back into the car. I am glad the littering hotline has returned- I will start using that regularly. Unfortunately, I suspect a lot of drivers will get that letter saying they littered and think it was in error as they never litter, they just throw their cigarette butts out the window.

Love this. This has been a #1 peeve of mine for years. Especially on the RiverWalk. Those things (full of all the chemicals the filter was designed to keep out of one's lungs) go right into the rivers after a rain. Why don't people equate butts with litter?

Because they're stupid and don't care?

stefb wrote:

Because they’re stupid and don’t care?

Speaking as a (former) longtime smoker, yeah, pretty much. I pitched butts in the street for years, until I realized how much littering I was doing. And I can safely say it was for no better reason than that was the norm amongst smokers when I picked up the habit. For some reason, I refused to pitch 'em when I was in the woods or otherwise off-pavement, but the street was always fair game.

i have been known to chase down cars and ask the drivers why they feel like its ok to dump toxic shit in my neighborhood, instead of keeping the waste from their disgusting habit in the vehicle. generally at some point i ask if it would be cool if i followed them home and dumped all my trash in their yard. the shock of a BICYCLE keeping up with them for a mile or so while i continue to lecture them on waste disposal seems to be quite disconcerting to them.

Power of social norms > power of law. ALWAYS. I'm going to play Stu here, look at the major litter types I see and not ask, how do we get people to throw this stuff out, but how do we not generate so much in the first place? So, how do we get more people to stop smoking, eat less fast food, drink more from (predominantly water containing) permanent bottles, and drink less from cans and (predominantly not water containing) plastic bottles. If you can, the bonus is that we clean up our insides, too! Encourage transportation cycling. Smoking and eating junk makes getting around slower and less pleasant. Disposable containers are a hassle when you've got one water bottle cage and it already has a water bottle in it. I'm a little biased, I know this, but the more problems I look at, the more (partial) answers I see. It's crazy. Or maybe I am.

The filters on cigarettes don't do much for health. The rest of a cigarette is rapidly biodegradable.

I've seen people throw piles of fast-food garbage out of their window. I yelled at those people. What got me most annoyed about it was that it occurred on a little back street that you would have to live in the area to know about. Who wants to live in a garbage dump? Litter is a real pet-peeve of mine. I will smoke from time to time but I always put it out and dispose of the butt - even if that means carrying it around in a dedicated garbage bag in my hiking pack over the course of a few days.

I was a chain smoker when I was younger. I was hitchhiking and backpacking and putting the ends of my home-rolled in a plastic bag. I crossed over the border from Canada, and some poor customs guy was ordered to open and sniff each of the several dozen cigarette butts. At some point, the guy was verbalizing some thoughts he was having about me. They weren't nice. I felt obligated to point out that him sniffing my butts was NOT my idea. Your tax dollars at work.

alleghenycleanways.org is always looking for more volunteers to help Clean our trails and rivers

andyc wrote:Litter is a real pet-peeve of mine

Ha, ha, ha. I remember litter used to bother me. Now I laugh at it. The amount of litter I ride through on the way to work would fill a landfill and then some. East Liberty alone has enough to fill NJ. I don't litter, but I also consider it part of the landscape in our region. Lets face it, this isn't Colorado were people love nature. This is Pittsburgh were lots of people just don't care about anything. Good luck having a "pet peeve" regarding litter living around here. I just find the matter funny. Life is too short to even deal with it. Have you ever driven through Larimer? Homewood? Just forget about it.

I can brush it off around here (usually) but it makes me pretty irate when I find garbage around the national forests and parks. To be fair though - it's pretty rare to find litter more than a quarter mile away from the parking lots.