Ashtrays outside Shops

54-11 said :

You beat me to it, Buzz. If filthy smokers can’t deal with their self-generated rubbish responsibly, then they don’t belong in a civilised society.

I think you miss the point that without ashtrays the smokers ‘deal’ with their rubbish by dropping it on the ground. This affects everyone *but* the smoker. Generally Ive seen smokers will use an ashtray if one is available. If these shops decide not to have ashtrays, they will get the butts to clean up on the ground, whether they like it or not. At least if you give people a way to act responsibly, you can prevent having to do as much cleaning of your property.

Suggested solutions:
* Give up;
* Carry one of those small personal butt bins;
* Smoke a pipe;
* Write letters to all managing agents for all small shopping precincts demanding they install special recepticles for the minority of people who still smoke;or
* Build a bridge and accept that society has decided to make life for smokers difficult.

Its hard to find public bins anywhere in Canberra littlone ashtrays, as Kate Carnel in all her wisdom decided to remove them when in Govt. as a cost savings measure.

The other reason for not having ashtrays outside shopping centres is that it’s illegal to smoke outside a shopping centre.

You could do it in the middle of the road instead. Getting hit by a bus is a quicker way to die anyway, I don’t know why so many go for the soft option; man up!

But seriously: you could carry a little plastic bag, and put the arse end of your cancer sticks in there and take them home to your own bin.

trying to get that single tear to well up in the eye.

“They always look around for a place to butt out”
CRAP. I’ve seen many smokers drop them on the groung within 1 metre of a butt-bin!

step on the butt then bend over and pick it up and dispose of it in the bin. is this idea that difficault for people to come up? or is it that smokers are too lazy to do such a thing?

A lot of the bins were probably removed due to smokers being too lazy to actually put their cigarette out before disposing of it in the “butt bins” thereby causing the whole bin to catch alight and smoke a lot.

Others may believe it a conspiracy of the world against smokers to encourage them to stop being dirty individuals and quit smoking.

Buzz2600 said :

Stop smoking.

^ That would be the best soloution. once they stamp out the butt, they could go inside a shop and put it in a bin. DIULAY, the owners of these small suburban shopping centres or shops are probably unaware of this problem and if you spoke to them about it I guess they would do something because they don’t want cigarette butts littered across their shopfront. Or maybe they are not put there anymore because they keep getting stolen/vandalised and the owners can not afford to replace them.

As i have mentioned in other articles about smoking on here recently, in the yeras up to about 2006, most rubbish bins and even butt receptacles were removed from most outdoor public spaces, such as shopping centres, etc… due to terrorism fears that a bomb could be planted in them. Even a standard “small” butt receptacle is still big enough to leave a small “pipe bomb” or similar in it, its just that the likelihood of someone trying to blow up your suburban shopping centre, or even one of the major ones at woden, tuggers, belco, etc… is very unlikely and the result of it is littering or all kinds, butts as well as other types of rubbish, has gone up a lot in recent years as a result. This is especially visible in canberra city where you sometimes have to walk at least a couple of blocks to even find a bin, and I don’t like leaving my butt in an indoor bin because of the smell to others.

You beat me to it, Buzz. If filthy smokers can’t deal with their self-generated rubbish responsibly, then they don’t belong in a civilised society.