18 January 2017

Don’t be a butt head, put it in the bin (or in a tin)

| Rachel Moore
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Cigarette butt. Photo: iStock

With the entire region on high alert and facing a total fire ban, it’s more important than ever that you do not flick your cigarette butts out the window, Canberra.

If you have enough money to smoke cigarettes, you can clearly afford a vessel to safely dispose your cigarettes butts in.

People who smoke cigarettes cop a lot of flack. There is no judgement here, unless you can’t clean up after yourself. If you don’t, we all might have a problem. Not just during bush fire season, but all year round. Clean up your personal waste.

Canberra, we have a beautiful city. The national parks, dams and lakes that surround and are part of our city are some of the best in Australia. Take the extra few steps towards the bin as you pace about smoking or bring your own cigarette butt disposal tray.

You can purchase a metal mint tin from pretty much all Canberra service stations and super markets that will provide an effective disposal unit. And hey, mints and smokers go hand in hand, right?

If you are a smoker, reformed smoker or just anyone who wants to keep Canberra a clean, healthy and beautiful city – pick up a few butts that are lying around. Especially in our national parks. Sure, someone else made the mistake of not being considerate by dropping their personal waste in the first place, but our environment should not be the one to suffer.

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Chris Mordd Richards5:55 pm 18 Jan 17

Charlotte Harper said :

Imagine doing that with the cost of cigarettes now! You’d be holidaying in Europe within months.

How people afford tailor mades these days I don’t know anymore. Personally I switched to rollies within 1yr of starting smoking at 17, and am damn glad I did. Less chemicals and it’s a lot cheaper too. I still spend $60 a fortnight on smokes atm and rollies keep going up too, but that is a far cry from the 200-300$ a fortnight I know some friends who smoke tailors still spend on their habit!

Chris Mordd Richards5:52 pm 18 Jan 17

I am a smoker and I agree 100%. I have taken to starting to shame other smokers who don’t responsibly deal with their butts now, it is up to us who do still smoke to set an example here imho.

Holden Caulfield11:44 am 18 Jan 17

I’m still aghast at the clown I saw flicking his cigarette butt out his car window on 19 January 2003. Some idiots will never learn!

Good advice, but unfortunately, for various reasons why the small percentage of people who still do smoke (less than 13% Australia wide I have read), may make many (not saying all) of them less likely to care about the mess they create. People with mental issues are also more likely to continue to smoke and find it harder to quit, so I imagine that 13% of remaining smokers would have a higher percentage of people with mental health issues than the other 87% (non-smokers) and picking up after themselves would not be high on their agenda.

Schizophrenia has over 40% smoking rate. Bipolar disorder about 35%…and so on
http://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/7-12-smoking-and-mental-health

Charlotte Harper10:43 am 18 Jan 17

I’m ashamed to say that back when I was a smoker as a teenager, I used to throw the butts out my bedroom window into the bushes below. I was stunned when I stuck my head out and took a look one day at the huge, ugly pile of butts that had appeared. The tin is an excellent idea, Rachel. When I quit smoking via a course called Smokenders, one of the tasks we had to do in the first few weeks was to collect all our butts in a jar that we kept somewhere prominent as a reminder. It was disgusting. More positively, another task once we’d stopped was to put the coins we would’ve spent on cigs into a jar each day and to buy ourselves something special with the funds once they’d built up. I bought myself a new hockey stick after a few weeks. Imagine doing that with the cost of cigarettes now! You’d be holidaying in Europe within months.

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