Since France banned smoking in public places more than four years ago, Parisians have felt little compunction about throwing their cigarette butts into the streets and gutters, overwhelming the city’s ability to keep them clean. A stroll through parts of Paris on weekend mornings is like walking in an ashtray.
Now the city is quietly trying something new, attaching little ribbed resin disks to public waste bins where smokers can put out their cigarettes.
But without much publicity, it may be a forlorn experiment in a city with a thriving nightlife where more than 30 per cent of the population still smokes, including nearly a third of 17-year-olds.
The authorities have already increased taxes on cigarettes and banned most advertisements for tobacco, but smoking has not lost its appeal.
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”The fact that smoking is still seen as a positive thing holds back any measures meant to change the habits of smokers,” said Celine Fournier, a spokeswoman for Droits des Non-Fumeurs, the Rights of Non-Smokers.
According to a Paris City Council spokesman, Damien Steffan, Parisians produce nearly 350 tons of cigarette waste yearly, much of it tossed on the ground.
The city intends to install 10,000 of the little disks – called eteignoirs, or ”snuffers” – on a third of the city’s 30,000 garbage bins by the end of the year.
”The objective is to make people understand that, like dog excrement, cigarette butts are waste and they shouldn’t be discarded on the ground,” said Francois Dagnaud, the deputy mayor in charge of waste management.
”The difficulty for us is to succeed in changing the way people see a cigarette butt,” Mr Dagnaud said.
But Ms Fournier doubts the ”symbolic” initiative will be enough to keep cigarette butts off the streets.
Photo by: AFP