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?
Well, I don’t think there’s a single answer.
I used to be a smoker. And it always pissed me off how cavalier other smokers were about just flicking a butt anywhere.
Having discussed it many times with other smokers, I gotta say the major reason for out is pure fucking laziness combined when apathy. People just don’t care, or think it doesn’t matter, and aren’t willing to put even the tiniest effort into not being assholes.
The next major reason is that smoking is basically burning a plant. There’s already a factor where you’re dropping ash, so there’s a predisposition to forgetting there’s a difference. And some people seem to think that because the cig was burning that it shouldn’t go in regular trash. Those folks are usually pretty good about using public ashtrays with a dedicated disposal container. Not all of them all the time, but more often than not.
I’m not saying I never left a butt behind (I love that phrase), but for me it was only when circumstances made it such that I wasn’t paying attention. High stress circumstances, and I wouldn’t be paying attention to what my hands were doing. I’d be done smoking, walking back to wherever and realize I didn’t have the butt with me.
There are portable options. My car didn’t come with an ashtray, but there are portable ones that cost less than a pack of cigarettes, even back when cigarettes were cheaper. There’s are also ones you can carry in a pocket or purse. I used to carry one in my pocket that was great because it was sealed well enough that you couldn’t smell anything from it.
But, barring a rare situation where the residual ember is too dangerous to stub out and then dispose of the little bit of tobacco left with a certainty of safety, there’s really zero excuse to not do that and at least carry your butt away to a receptacle of some kind, even if you’re in your own yard. But if things are that flammable, you shouldn’t be smoking to begin with.
Back when I would work the door as a bouncer at bars and clubs, I was kinda known for being pissy about it. I’d be smoking myself, see someone toss a butt and give them shit for it. “Why you fucking up my parking lot? Pick your shit up.” Benefit of being a bouncer and looking like a bouncer is you can get away with that kind of thing. Like, motherfucker, I’m standing right here next to a giant ashtray with a disposal bucket for the butts. Don’t just drop your trash. My boss at the one place said I was scaring customers. I said good, now the place won’t look trashy, and you can get customers that aren’t lazy assholes that leave the parking lot littered up. Besides, if a bouncer can’t put a little fear into lazy assholes, why do the job? That’s practically part of the benefits of the job lol.
But, yeah, the vast majority are lazy assholes. Not just the smokers, it’s anyone with something small enough they don’t think it’s worth any effort to dispose of properly. A single napkin, straws, straw wrappers, toothpicks. Cigs are just more frequent because smokers go through then in bigger numbers, so they pile up more obviously.
To add to this, it’s also modeled in our media.
Characters be flicking them everywhere, pitching them to the ground and decisively tamping them out with their foot, because that is what being cool and tough is about. The only time someone is depicted properly disposing of a cigarette is if there’s an ash tray they smish it in, preferably next to a glass of hard liquor or a beer.