Stick your butt in a trashcan
NEW YORK - Hi, I’m Margaret. I’m an eco fashion and eco trend blogger living in New York City. This is my first of many contributions from Strawberry Earth’s New York City outpost! Some of my columns will be about how awesomely eco conscious New Yorkers are and how much we care about our natural environment. This, is not one of those columns.In fact, I have a major bone to pick with some New Yorkers: our smokers and their stubborn insistence on throwing away cigarette butts like confetti.
Although New Yorkers aren’t as hard-core into smoking as people in other cities around the world, there is a still very visible smoking community. And, since the ban on indoor smoking for bars and restaurants those smokers have been forced to smoke outside. Luckily, New York City has 25.000 trashcans around the city; one on every street corner. So, it’s a complete mystery why smokers throw their butts everywhere but inside the trashcan?
Maybe it’s payback for being forced to huddle together like outcasts around the doors of office blocks all over the city. Perhaps there’s a pattern to the way the butts are scattered and it’s some sort of secret code that we non-smokers don’t know about (doubtful but, hey, you never know). Or, possibly, it’s just good old fashioned thoughtlessness. Whatever the reason, no fair!
I’m not just talking about the cigarette butts that collect in front of office doors around the city. Oh no… I also have issues with smokers and their butts across the whole city. Hell, even outside a recent organic vodka event, I witnessed dozens of wrists nonchalantly flicking their cigarette butts away.
When did littering become cool, again? It’s the trend everywhere. Even in my home-boro (QUEENS baby!) and my party-boro of Manhattan.
‘No littering’ is back to basics environmentalism guys. It’s not like I’m talking carbon offsets here, or asking you to petition polluting multinational energy companies, or support über eco friendly Chilean sea-bass farmers. This is just about not throwing trash on the ground. Maybe Los Angeles has it right in heavily fining anyone who throws a butt on the ground. I know we’re in a credit crisis but maybe a financial penalty is what smokers need to get their asses in-gear and their butts into trash-cans.
I have found there is an alternative for bad butts.. they are cotton based and filter perfectly.. The only problem is, they are not obligatory for cigarettes yet.. Let politicians consider this first instead of banning all smokers to oblivion.
Hmm ja. Ik zal eerlijk bekennen dat ik ook zo’n roker ben die zn peuken op straat gooit.. Ik zou ze liever in de vuilnisbak mikken, maar bij mij slaat de angst altijd toe dat de peuk in kwestie toch nog nét niet helemaal uit is, en dat vervolgens de trashcan in de fik vliegt..
Oplossing: van die prullebak en asbak in één dingen?
Smoking should just be illegal. Why should you be allowed to do something that not only hurts yourself and others, but pollutes? It’s bad out there. And you know what really bugs me? That new Sephora ad in this month’s LUCKY. I mean, I use that polish like it’s got God in it, but really. Dripping? Yes, it’s sexy, but you could just have a scantily clad girl holding it. Come on. Anyone agree? I think it’s a waste of precious polish. I LOVE LUCKY!! and Elle. And Vogue. And Cosmo is just the Bible. You know?