Startup Plans To Clean Up Cigarette Butts Using Crows (popularmechanics.com) 205
AmiMoJo writes: A startup in the Netherlands is developing the "Crowbar," a bird feeder that takes discarded cigarette butts as payment for dispensing food. A camera recognises cigarette filters and rejects any other objects placed in the Crowbar. The idea isn't entirely original, a gentleman in the US has already built a similar device and trained crows to deposit coins. The hope is that crows will be able to keep cities clean, sort through refuse and perform other tasks for our mutual benefit.
Popular Mechanics notes that crows "are some of the smartest animals in the world," suggesting this means "we could harness their abilities for the greater good of our planet."
Popular Mechanics notes that crows "are some of the smartest animals in the world," suggesting this means "we could harness their abilities for the greater good of our planet."
Gateway drug (Score:5, Insightful)
To crows smoking marijuana.
Next thing you know they will be robbing liquor stores and pirating music!
Re:Gateway drug (Score:5, Funny)
To crows smoking marijuana. Next thing you know they will be robbing liquor stores and pirating music!
Stone the crows!
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To crows smoking marijuana.
Next thing you know they will be robbing liquor stores and pirating music!
Or start a band: Stoned Temple Pirate Counting Crows
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https://youtu.be/Ev4DqBHtA24?t... [youtu.be]
human smokers will be trained (Score:5, Insightful)
"it's okay for me to throw my butts into the street, because a crow will pick it up and get fed. I'm thinking of the crows"
how about robots that pick up smoldering butts and use them to burn the faces of the smokers that throw them. I think this kind of negative reinforcement is a better solution and doesn't involve enslaving animals.
Re:human smokers will be trained (Score:5, Funny)
Hee hee, crows will swoop in on unsuspecting smokers and snatch their still-lit cigarettes from their hands. They will grab entire packs when they can. It will be hilarious.
Re:human smokers will be trained (Score:5, Informative)
crows can actually be taught to do that, even to peck the smokers faces as it wrests the cigarettes away. the ad campaign can feature excerpts from Hitchcock's "The Birds"
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Done give away their actual motive. We can make robots to clean the streets. But we need animals to actually attack the cause. Plausible deniability.
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Do you think it's more dignified for the human who currently has the job?
Or take them from bins (Score:2)
... and would we ever know?
Re:human smokers will be trained (Score:5, Interesting)
I was in the military back in the 1990s. Each day, two guys would be assigned as the "barracks NCOs". (NCO: Non-Commisioned Officer, enlisted person of corporal or above) They were there to ensure nothing bad happened without it being written down in a log book. Ok, ok, sometimes they prevented bad stuff from happening to begin with.
One day, I had the barracks NCO duty. It was on a Thursday, which was cleaning day for Friday's inspections. One duty was having a work detail clean the yard around the building, and the common areas in the 4-story building. Usually this was having 15-20 guys walk around the building picking up trash, which was mostly cigarette butts, and 8-10 guys cleaning the TV lounges, walk ways, and laundry rooms. So that would be 2 or 3 guys per floor.
Anyway, on my day I asked the work detail a simple question: Who here smokes?
No one raised their hand. I asked again, and again. Finally I said "OK. Nonsmokers, point to the smokers." Hands went up pointing out the 7 or 8 smokers. So only the smokers walked around the barracks that day, picking up all those cigarette butts, and the other guys were ecstatic because they didn't have to touch those nasty things, and they had a lot more help cleaning the common areas.
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Finally I said "OK. Nonsmokers, point to the smokers."
This is so evil. I love you!
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I had grounds duty in training in the Air Force back in '79 picking up butts. I also found quite a few roaches, often enough to make a decent joint out of them. Made for a relaxed weekend.
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I don't know what branch you were in, but I'd bet money you weren't in the Army. Why? Well, I've noticed many times that Army vets talk about being in the Army, but vets from any other branch talk about being in the military. I've no idea why, but that's how it seems to work. And that's the way I say it, and I was in Uncle Sam's Navy back in 'Nam.
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Good deduction. I was in the Marine Corps, stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station in Kaneohe, Hawaii. Nice place to be stationed.
I usually use the generic term "the military" because too many people, veterans and non-veterans alike, have pre-conceived notions of each branch. I simply didn't want it to detract from the story. It's also shorter to type. :^)
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Because Navy and Air Force recruits are capable of using words of more than two syllables?
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Anyway, on my day I asked the work detail a simple question: Who here smokes?
No one raised their hand. I asked again, and again. Finally I said "OK. Nonsmokers, point to the smokers." Hands went up pointing out the 7 or 8 smokers.
I don't believe you. No soldier would ever rat out their fellow soldiers.
Soldiers would stand there all night if need be, without saying a word, unless the smokers themselves stepped forward.
Someone ratting out others would find themselves ostracised at best, and likely the reaction would be more severe, but the real reason they would not betray their fellow soldiers is that the first thing soldiers learn is that they have to be able to trust each other completely, because their lives depend on it.
Not betr
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Sorry to burst your bubble, but when someone has to pick up cigarette butts from a barracks full of smokers who are such pigs that they throw the butts on the ground, the social convention of not ratting out your fellow men eventually disappears. Especially since only about one fourth to one third were smokers, so most of the ones picking up the butts were non-smokers.
We aren't talking about having each others' backs in combat. We are talking about having to pick up others' biological waste. Those who put i
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Who said they were scared?
Apart from you, that is.
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"it's okay for me to throw my butts into the street, because a crow will pick it up and get fed. I'm thinking of the crows"
It's pretty obvious most smokers already think it's okay for them to throw their butts on the street - no justification necessary.
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how about robots that pick up smoldering butts and use them to burn the faces of the smokers that throw them. I think this kind of negative reinforcement is a better solution and doesn't involve enslaving animals.
This sounds expensive to build and maintain. Let's just optimize it a little bit and just have robots that burn the faces of people that drop cigarette butts. No wait, that'll still be too expensive. Ok, so we can just have them burn the faces of people holding a cigarette butt. Hmm... still rather expensive. We could use a much slower processor if we just have robots that will burn people's faces. Now it's best if we optimize the mechanical aspect too so that we can really get the prices into range.
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How about adapting the suicide booths from Futurama?
Let's make "Smoking Booth" and make it mandatory to use them for smokers.
The smoking booth functions as follows: when it detects smoke, it completely drench the inside via its fire suppression system. Every time. Blame it on malfunctions but still make their use mandatory for smokers.
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It would be simpler to just randomly insert a small amount of some mild (but moderately stable) explosive in 1% of cigarettes.
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Enslaving seems a bit harsh? They are going to offer them food in exchange for butts. If the crows don't like it they can literally fly off.
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Good god! That would be a total waste of steel wouldn't it?
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You'd feel better if a pack of cigarettes were stuffed down your throat. So would everyone else. I recommend you try it!
They are smart... (Score:5, Funny)
Crows are smart, but I'm not sure about being smartest. I found an injured crow when I was a kid and took it home to nurse it back to health. It eventually got better, but didn't seem to have any interest in being returned to the wild. Whenever I would take it outside it would flop around like it still had a broken wing. It got to the point that it would start flopping around in the house anytime my mom would start bitching about it. She eventually threw it out the third story window, and it tried to fly back in. As soon as I opened the door to the house, it flew back in. It learned to ring the doorbell to get someone to open the door after a couple of days. I think my mom was happy when we moved, in part, to get rid of my pet crow.
I wonder what the unintended consiquences of rewarding a bunch of crows could be? They may start raiding public trash and ashtrays for food.
Re:They are smart... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds pretty smart to me. Being in the wild means no food other than what you catch yourself, cold and so on. Faking an injury means having food delivered right under your beak, and a warm house. I guess you didn't do anything stressful like keeping the bird confined in a tiny cage, so the new environment wasn't bad.
The crow wasn't a professional at mind-controlling humans like the Master Species so no meows at frequencies that simulate a human baby, no mind-altering parasites, and it doesn't look cute either, thus you managed to get rid of that crow... but the principle is the same.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Honestly that description makes the crow sound really smart.
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I wonder if that pet crow survived the humans moved.
Crows more trainable than smokers? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's too bad some humans can't be trained not to litter in the first place.
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From TFS: "Crows are some of the smartest animals in the world".
And remember we are comparing them to evolved monkeys who work 8+ hour days for most of their lives, in exchange for money, which they spend on small sticks made of a cocktail of nasty toxic substances, all so they can inhale those substances all the while knowing fully well that in the end their only achievement was to exchange their earned money for an even shorter life expectancy.
Yeah, sure (Score:2)
Until the crows get beak cancer and PETA finds out.
You know, maybe, just maybe, we could convince municipalities that it's THEIR job to keep a city clean, by, you know, HIRING people to sweep streets?
Not everything needs to be a magical unicorn tech-incubator 3D printed private space asteroid-mined facebook-enabled startup.
Just saying.
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You know, maybe, just maybe, we could convince municipalities that it's THEIR job to keep a city clean, by, you know, HIRING people to sweep streets?
Since it would actually be the smokers duty to not litter the city, municipalities should rather hire people to fine those who throw their butts everywhere.
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It would be better to hire people to shoot smokers in the head. Or train the crows to do it.
Well... (Score:2)
At least it's not another Kickstarter.
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I've considered running for office on the policy of "Dog owners will either clean it up or eat it".
Tickets (Score:3)
If cigarette butts are that big of a problem why not just hire some bylaw enforcement officers to patrol the areas and give out tickets for littering for anyone throwing the butts on the sidewalk/street. After people get a large fine, or two, for littering they will change their ways.
We are a part of nature. It doesn't exist for use to use as raw materials. Until we change this attitude that everything is here for us to exploit then we will continue to seeing nature "fight back".
Re: Tickets (Score:2)
We have that here. The problem is that the smokers are too numerous to make a dent in the problem this way.
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Fine the ones you catch enough to clean up all the butts. Repeat as necessary
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f cigarette butts are that big of a problem why not just hire some bylaw enforcement officers to patrol the areas and give out tickets for littering for anyone throwing the butts on the sidewalk/street. After people get a large fine, or two, for littering they will change their ways.“
People don‘t work for peanuts, crows do.
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People are sneaky, it is too hard. You'd have to use cameras. And then there is a whole different [blah blah blah].
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Why not put a deposit on them just like cans and bottles. Say 50 cents per cigarette. Refundable at any place that sell cigarettes. People would pick them up just as soon as they hit the ground.
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Smokers hate that idea, and are numerous enough to be a fairly large voting and lobbying bloc.
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After people get a large fine, or two, for littering they will change their ways.
Sure. We only need to catch 1 billion people a couple of times and the problem will be solved. Except for those who don't see fines as a deterrent. And those who do the math and realise that the police can't catch everyone and the odds of getting a fine are minuscule. Oh I think the police have better things to do.
Speaking of littering, on the front page is an article that says NASA got fined $400 for dropping a space station on some town. Incidentally the cost of a packet of cigarettes from a service stat
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If you need help enforcing it, give the fine based on video recordings instead of requiring police eye-witness. If the video comes from a layperson, then give them 10% of the fine. Pretty soon you'll have lookouts on every street and alleyway.
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Then you're missing the point that odds of enforcement are low. Police have better things to do, and the studies that show the scale of punishment doesn't make it a deterrent. All you're doing is eventually feeding the prison industrial complex with people who make poor financial choices and littering rather than with criminals. The often insane disconnect between crime and punishment is precisely how the USA got to where it is.
If the video comes from a layperson, then give them 10% of the fine.
This is a dumb idea:
a) you waste police time with analysing video authenticity
b)
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After people get a large fine, or two, for littering they will change their ways.
Just like how there's no speeders on the road because the first few speeders got a large fine.
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That's a good example. The vast majority of people (here at least) drive at the highest speed that the cops will ignore. A small number drive faster, and get fined. Seems like the fines work for the majority.
Minute of hate (Score:2, Informative)
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Did you have this copied somewhere, just waiting for a thread that mentions smoking? Almost every post here is disparaging people who litter, not for smoking in general. The big reason non-smokers hate smokers is because they have to breathe your smoke in. If smokers didn't regularly expose the rest of us to their smoke and disgusting trash, you wouldn't have to post stuff like that, because we generally wouldn't care.
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Re:Minute of hate (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll end up saying something similar to the Reverend, maybe less angry. We're (at least not me) aren't intolerant of smokers, especially now that little of it is done inside. I recognize it's a tough addiction to kick (I can't even kick my mild desire for sugary sodas). What I don't care for is cigarette butts all over the place. I don't throw my soda cans on the ground, they go into a recycle bin. If smokers would do something similar and get the other smokers to do the same, I'd have no problems with it.
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You end up paying for them when they get cancer too. Either through your taxes, or through higher insurance premiums, depending how your country does it.
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I did the research on that for an assignment in undergrad. At the time (and taxes haven't gone down since then), the average smoker in Canada paid quite a bit more in taxes than they took out in public health care for their lung cancer and emphysema. Smoking costs a truly unreasonable amount when you add up a lifetime of it, and smokers tend to die fairly quickly, young enough that they haven't cost much in health care or pensions as elderly people.
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Well, one less reason to object then! Might even help fix the pension problem.
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Yes, aside from the humanitarian issues, if we could get all the smokers to do it in isolation, it would be a pretty big net gain for society. Most places are pretty well toward that goal now, except for the littering issue.
The humanitarian issue is pretty big though.
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I don't hate people who smoke - I hate people who smoke and are assholes about it. Smoke yourself silly when I don't have to smell it, fine by me. Smoke when it affects me, or make a mess that I have to deal with - no, that's not acceptable.
BTW, I also grew up when smoking was cool and smoked for decades and quit as well - climb off your fucking cross.
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Amen to that, but what does any of it have to do with the littering problem being discussed here? Whether someone is suffering from an unfortunate addiction or not has no impact on their ability to dispose of their trash.
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Regarding your point about superiority: You still see the world like a teenager. Because it's hard for you to do, you think you deserve some sort of an award. Guess what? In the real world, people respect you
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Quit whining about people trying to help you. More restrictions on smoking mean its easier for ex-smokers to stay that way, and for current smokers to quit. You picked up a deadly addiction from some evil corporations. A bunch of people fought really hard to make what those corps did to you as illegal as they could. That's why smoking "wasn't cool" for the generation after you. The "hate" is peer pressure, harnessed and used for good.
Perhaps you were quitting smoking when it was still permissible to sm
Crows can be entertaining (Score:2)
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One outside my grandmother's house when I was a kid learned to make a sound like a car alarm. It took me a while to figure out it was a crow. I'm pretty sure it did it purely for the enjoyment of watching the local BMW owner go running out to check his car.
If you are going to train the crows ... (Score:5, Funny)
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...why train them to pick cigarette butts? Why can't you train them to poop on the smokers?
That requires active training with video verification. Lots of work.
This setup is more passive, and the verification can be automated and based on still frames of a known input receptacle.
Maybe an AR headset for crows would be a good personal project for somebody? Probably not for everycrow, though.
And a world of new possibilties... (Score:2)
...opens up for organized labor.
I do this with dogs. (Score:5, Interesting)
We have a large pack of livestock working dogs on our farm. I taught one to pickup trash for treats. Others observed this and picked up the behavior. One of them figured out how to increase the price by breaking trash up into pieces and getting treats for each piece. Doganomics.
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2011/0... [sugarmtnfarm.com]
It's quite successful.
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> breaking trash up into pieces and getting treats for each piece.
Wow, many humans don't understand that until age 3-4.
Would it be possible (Score:2)
to simply make the cigarettes out of biodegradable materials ? Dissolves / decays when exposed to sunlight or water for X amount of time.
I'm not a smoker so dunno how plausible it would be, but beats having animals picking up our trash.
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to simply make the cigarettes out of biodegradable materials ? Dissolves / decays when exposed to sunlight or water for X amount of time.
I'm not a smoker so dunno how plausible it would be, but beats having animals picking up our trash.
Well done on that sarcasm. But lately there have been ads running claiming that butts last for some long amount of time which is clearly not true (otherwise this would be a real problem instead of some hatefest clickbait). So many people are seriously under the impression that they are not biodegradable for some weird reason.
"No wait, I got space for more..." (Score:2)
I was on vacation once, and there was this crow-like bird outside my vacation cabin. I'd thrown him bits of banana, and he'd gobbled them down.
At some point, he must have gotten full, but he knows there's more banana available. All of a sudden, he regurgitates other food he'd eaten earlier (you could tell it was a different color), and carries on with the banana pieces.
I for one welcome... (Score:4, Informative)
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Crows can definitely identify people... and cats. My brother's cat made enemies of the crows near his house, so whenever the cat went outside all the crows around his house would dive at his cat.
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If you want to get your creep on, it's easier to just buy a drone.
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It's even easier to type something in a search engine.
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Can you train birds NOT to shit on my car? 'Kay, thanks...
The solution is similar: find an animal that can get rid of the problem.
Some kittehs are afraid of anything bigger than a fly or spider. My current one has dragged in a couple of jackdaws hardly smaller than himself. No poop bombs from these two anymore!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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The solution is actually much simpler: make a "CrowBar" where the crows can go have a dump and get food in exchange.
A friend of mine trained his parrot to shit in ashtrays so crows should be able to learn that, maybe other birds too.
To refine the system, add bird facial recognition across stations and keep track of the intake versus the outtake and refuse to dispense food if the bird is not "clean".
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Simple answer: because they can get away with it.
The only way you could actually enforce the laws prohibiting it (and there are actual laws against it in every city I've ever lived in), is if you had cameras *EVERYWHERE*... and advanced image recognition software to instantly recognize when a person was breaking the law, and be able to make them accountable.
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Nah, random reinforcement actually works better. You catch one chucking a butt, you fine them. Yes, you miss 99% of the times. But you make the one time hurt enough, and they stop doing it.
When I was a kid people tossed all kinds of litter. You'd be driving along and see McDonalds cups go flying out car windows pretty routinely. Now? Very rarely.
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How often do you see people smoking in areas near buildings where there are clearly labelled no-smoking signs. I see it all the time where I live. I have known countless people that smoke, but only know of one person I've met in my entire life that ever actually got a fine for doing th
If you don't even care what dirt enters your lung (Score:3)
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I think almost everybody is raised by their parents to throw garbage in the bin, instead of on the street. So why do smokers discard their cigarettes on the ground?
Do you want them to toss it on the ground, or toss it in a bin where there's paper and other flammables? Think about it.
If there's an ashtray around (and not one of those pole-with-a-hole designed by non-smokers with no clue how stubbing out a cigarette works), smokers will generally use it. But the anti-smokers don't want ashtrays.
(And yes, I'm a non-smoker.)
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Do you want them to toss it on the ground, or toss it in a bin where there's paper and other flammables? Think about it.
Part of the problem is the viewpoint that those are the only two options. It's your (or their) trash, dispose of it properly. Why is there an expectation that ashtrays should be provided at any random spot that someone might finish smoking? Like any other trash, hold onto it until there is a proper place to dispose of it. Throwing your trash on the ground should never be viewed as an acceptable option.
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Why is there an expectation that ashtrays should be provided at any random spot that someone might finish smoking? Like any other trash, hold onto it until there is a proper place to dispose of it.
Unless there's a chance to stub it out, a typical cigarette will continue burning and melt the filter, and create a stench that's far worse than the tobacco smell, or burn the person's fingers. Or did you want them to stub it out on the nearest wall? Some do, and I think that's a far worse solution than dropping it and stepping on it.
Best would be if smokers didn't smoke, but they do, and I personally prefer to (a) provide usable ashtrays, and when ashtrays aren't available, (b) for the smoker to dispose
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There are lots of other options. Carry your own ashtray with a lid. I've even seen nice leather cases that do that duty. They're stylish and everything.
Smokers are and have always been irresponsible and entitled regarding their habit. Many of them still deny the problems with second hand smoke and think it's terribly unfair that they can't just smoke anywhere they want.
I very occasionally enjoy a cigar. I definitely do not chuck it on the ground when I'm done. I dispose of it responsibly, like an adul
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I'm not sure when I last saw a bin that didn't include an ashtray in its design. Do people violently oppose installing them where you live?
Smokers are the worst (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know what it is, but even nice respectable people who smoke don't seem to have any issue pitching their butts out the window when finished, often not even making sure they are out. Not just a few wildfires have been started by this behavior.
Bizarre.
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Every year, at least one brush fire is started that way in California.
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Citation Needed
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There are rarely fines for tossing cigarette butts on the ground, so smokers do it. People used to toss all kinds of garbage, but many cities instituted fines, and jacked them up until it stopped.
Some idiot chucking a butt out a car window in an area just devastated by a forest fire recently got a $2500 fine. He complained in national media. He didn't get a lot of sympathy.
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And the non smokers are just as bad. Really.
The Dutch are a wonderful nation but one of the few black spots on their image is throwing stuff on the ground. It is truly depressing widespread behavior. A bunch of people walk through a park on the way to a venue and after that it is like the Huns have passed. The non-smokers will trow other trash - they are not at all less likely to do it.
I know from my bird watching friends that every filter can cost a bird's, life because often they swallow them and suffocat
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Where I live if you harm a bird in public people will take videos and call the cops, and you'll be arrested for either "Molesting Wildlife" or "Animal Cruelty."
One time I caught a fish in the city park and a heron swooped down and ate it. I turned my back for 2 seconds to get my fish whacker to kill the fish, and it saw me turn my head and swooped right in. All you can do is keep fishing, the bird wins that one. They'll have to learn to just run away from crows! LOL
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No, carrying around some bulky, fireproof container is not a viable solution.
Back when I smoked I carried around a little latched tin container, it ain't hard.
This level of nonsense is part of the reason I keep an e-cigarette always handy; you can use them just about anywhere which is a big upside on days when the weather is terrible.
Oh you're one of them...
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Yup.
"I'm so courteous I don't understand why non-smokers think I'm disgusting. Yes, I throw burning litter on the ground, but it would be mildly inconvenient for me to carry it with me and dispose if it properly."