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This was a fascinating read. I'm surprised tobacco is the number 1 litter. I rarely see people smoking anymore where I live, so I would assume it would not be a
by irrational 7y ago
This was a fascinating read. I'm surprised tobacco is the number 1 litter. I rarely see people smoking anymore where I live, so I would assume it would not be a top contributor to litter. Is smoking still very prevalent in San Fransisco?
- Reedx 7y ago> Is smoking still very prevalent in San Fransisco? No, but for some reason people think throwing cigarette butts on the ground and out of car windows isn't littering.
- woah 7y agoThey are returning the gifts of the tobacco plant to the Earth
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoAlong with the dino juice for the filter. It's a circle of life.
- CriticalCathed 7y agoI think it's not so much that it's very prevalent, I think it's that most smokers don't carry their butts away with them if there's not a trash can 30 millimeters from their hands.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoHa, drivers almost certainly have a ready receptacle in their car, they still wind down the window and throw the butts out.
- brenden2 7y agoI have a dog, and when we're walking around I always notice all the cigarette butts on the ground (because my dog tries to eat everything off the ground so I have to watch). It doesn't surprise me that so much litter is just tobacco products. (Also I live in NYC these days, but I used to live in SF).
- booleandilemma 7y agoAnd nowadays in NYC I’m seeing discarded plastic vaping things, which is even worse, imo.
- brenden2 7y agoI've noticed this too. If you have a dog, you also learn very quickly just how many discarded chicken bones exist throughout the city (hint: it's more than you want it to be).
- elenaguberman 7y agoI completely agree. I clean up with Emin and rubbish, and this project was initially inspired because I have a corgi vacuum cleaner who eats everything on the ground. Once I started scanning, it's impossible to unsee the litter. So we started cleaning and recording it!
- Rychard 7y agoDiscarded chicken wings have become a bit of a trope in Atlanta. https://www.instagram.com/wingsofatl/ https://www.instagram.com/wingsofatl/
- gdulli 7y agoIn my city, cigarettes and scratch-off lottery tickets seem to be the things that people don't feel any particular need to dispose of properly.
- twic 7y agoCigarette butts, lottery tickets, and coffee cups - the detritus of addiction. Is there a connection there?
- chrischen 7y agoI think the connection is probably poverty. They gives less of a ____.
- roguecoder 7y agoEven if that is true, it is more likely the result of poverty being inherently stressful and requiring the use of cognitive resources rich people can spend on other things (https://zhaolab.psych.ubc.ca/pdfs/Zhao_2013_Science.pdf https://zhaolab.psych.ubc.ca/pdfs/Zhao_2013_Science.pdf)
- chrischen 7y agoYes, that's what not giving a ___ is. But I don't think it's always stress, it could also be different priorities.
- mirimir 7y agoI guess. When I was really poor, I rolled my own cigarettes. And when I finished one, I kept the tobacco in a small plastic bag. As backup, for when I was too poor to buy more. You may say "yuck". But trust me, good tobacco the second time around is better than the stuff in those nasty папироса.
- twic 7y agoHow do you smoke tobacco twice?
- codeddesign 7y agoIt’s a little subjective though. 800 Starbucks cups is a much larger issue compared to 1500 cigarette butts (for example)
- jazzyjackson 7y agoIs it tho? Coffee cups are made of paper. Cigarette butts are a plastic foam embedded with a multitude of carcinogens.
- mihok 7y agoI don't have a reference, but I believe coffee cups are assumed to be recyclable even though actually, and in most part due to the polyethylene-lined inside, they are not.
- hanniabu 7y agoAnd here I am thinking it was a wax lining. Why would you a plastic lining for something you put hot liquid in, which would cause leeching? (Not that was doesn't have issues, aka melting)
- merlincorey 7y agoTry putting some hot water in a "cup" you make from paper and you may find that the thin plastic barrier makes some functional sense. I agree however, that I'd rather just use re-usable glass or metal cup (with a handle or suitable insulated wrappping) and avoid the potential for hot liquids leaching things out of plastic!
- toomanybeersies 7y agoNot all plastic causes leeching, and as you said, wax melts which is definitely leeching.
- layoutIfNeeded 7y agoWrong. Cigarette filters are made from cellulose.
- hapless 7y agoEvery smoker is producing 20 to 40 pieces of litter per day -- every butt that gets tossed.
- baud147258 7y ago20 to 40 smokes every day is very heavy smoking, I'd guess most smoker aren't at that level
- hapless 7y agoIt's somewhat heavy, but not extraordinarily so. The average smoker consumes just under a pack a day. A heavy smoker might go through two or three packs a day.
- roguecoder 7y agoYes: people smoke walking down the street all the time. It is a real challenge having asthma. I blame the lack of a real winter. In the northeast people quit smoking when it was banned indoors, because they didn't want to smoke in the freezing cold snow, whereas in SF people just go outside all year around.
- toomanybeersies 7y agoMost smokers assume that filters are actually biodegradable (it is possible to buy biodegradable filters if you roll your own), when in fact they aren't. I never chuck my butts on the ground, if there isn't a rubbish bin nearby, I'll either put the butt back in my packet, or just put it in my pocket. When I see friends tossing their butts I always have a go at them for littering, most just don't even realise what they're doing is wrong.
- leetcrew 7y agoI'm not sure that many smokers still believe butts are biodegradable, but I could certainly be wrong. I suspect (as an exsmoker) that it's more about the availability of cigarette receptacles. most smokers I know are willing to dispose of butts when there's a convenient place to put them, but are not willing to carry them around until they find a suitable place. used cigarettes make your clothes smell a lot worse that merely smoking outside.
- eldenbishop 7y agoSome interesting tidbits on cigarette litter in San Francisco. A study commissioned by SF Public Works in 2009 determined that the direct costs for cigarette related litter in San Francisco could be remediated with a 22 cent per pack tax. The actual tax in San Francisco is 85 cents per pack known as the "Cigarette Litter Abatement Fee". The 2009 study claimed around 30 million packs/year are sold in San Francisco which would be roughly 25 million dollars a year in taxes collected for this purpose with an estimated cleanup cost of only 7-8 million. So not only are cigarette smokers already paying for the cleanup they are paying nearly four times the actual cleanup cost for their litter. The 2009 study: https://sfpublicworks.org/sites/default/files/tobacco_litter_study_hecg_062209%5B1%5D.pdf https://sfpublicworks.org/sites/default/files/tobacco_litter... The tax: https://sftreasurer.org/cigarette https://sftreasurer.org/cigarette