9:30am | My piece last week decrying smokers who discard their cigarette butts to the ground rather than dispose of them properly garnered a type of criticism I get now and again: “[H]ow about proposing a solution?”
This came from “Paul,” a smoker who claims to dislike littering but passes the buck on taking personal responsibility for his actions:
I believe that the city and establishment like bars have done a poor job in accommodating those of us who have developed the “nasty” habit of smoking. It is rare to find a public ashtray let alone a public trash can in which you can dispose of an extinguished cigarette. Hey I agree street full of cigarette butts is quite nasty, but how about proposing a solution? […] I’m all for herding us like cattle in to a smoking section but throw us a bone or preferably a way to dispose of our trash. […] Until there’s a solution for us “mi screeds” [miscreants?] of society I will unfortunately have to continue to flick my cigarette off the curve just where the street slopes in hopes that the street sweeper will get to it.
Many of society’s problems are complex; littering is not one of them, because the solution — the only solution — is simple: for people to stop littering. Tossing a cigarette butt into the street is nothing more than individual choice, which we influence through various forms of discussion (education, community outreach, articles like this), along with societal deterrents (enforcement of existing laws, fines, social expressions of disapproval).
There’s something perverse in Paul’s suggestion that he’s got every right to keep littering until those of us who don’t like it come up with a solution. It’s like the wife-beater who says it’s incumbent upon his wife to solve his rage issues. No, buddy boy, you just need to stop beating your wife. Get counseling, stop drinking, get a divorce — that’s for you to figure out. It’s great if someone comes and helps you; but if no one does, that doesn’t justify your bad behavior.
One of the principles of Burning Man is “radical self-reliance.” And truly, you are expected to exercise just this muscle when it comes to refuse. Basically there are no trash receptacles at Burning Man other than what people bring. If it’s wood or paper, you can burn it; otherwise, you are required to haul out of Black Rock City every scrap of refuse you generated during the week. How do you achieve this? That’s your problem. If you can’t solve it, stay home.
Former smoker “Jerry” wrote of a solution completely available to Paul, if only the latter gets over his sense of entitlement: “if there was not a convenient place to put the butt, after I put it out, I put it back in the pack. I would put it in the trash later.”
“Duh,” right? But habit is a powerful thing — not just physical addictions (e.g., nicotine), but habits of action, like crushing out a butt underfoot and leaving it on the sidewalk, can be domineering mistresses. For some people changing even a simple habit feels like an upheaval. I know nothing about Paul’s intellect, but undoubtedly if there were an inescapable $1,000 fine for every cigarette butt he littered out into the street, he would have come up with a solution like Jerry’s. It’s just that to this point his motivation to change his actions has been insufficient. It’s a problem of personal responsibility: some of us take it, some of us don’t.
As pointed out by a couple of commenters, this particular shirking of personal responsibility occurs most frequently at bars. For example, as I stood in front of the V Room the other night, most every person out there was smoking cigarettes, then tossing the butts into the street. It was truly appalling. I suppose Paul would say that because there were no ashtrays (I didn’t see any, at least), this is just desserts for the V Room and the City of Long Beach — and that if we don’t like, then we need to do something about it.
Yes, the V Room could put ashtrays outside. Or the doorperson could refuse entry to anyone caught engaging in such activity. Or the LBPD could start little sting operations in which they park an unmarked car across the street and keep track of everyone they see doing this, then issue citations to the guilty parties. (Had they been doing this for the hour I stood out front, the City could have made several thousands of dollars.)
But those are combative strategies, not solutions. The solution is for each individual to take personal responsibility. If you are the architect of a problem, it is incumbent upon you, not the rest of society, to solve it.
This is not revolutionary thinking. But obviously it would be a kind of revolution for people to act on this simple precept. Because when masses of people are willing to toss their garbage into the street and say its society’s problem and not theirs, they’re right about one thing: society has a problem.
And no, I don’t have the solution. But talking about it is probably a good start.