Meet BVEGAN.
BVEGAN was on Route 28 with me the other day and I couldn’t help but notice her enthusiasm for animal issues. She loves her shelter dog and opposes puppy farms, and kudos to her for it. She’s a vegan and thinks it’s the humane alternative and, well, I don’t share her convictions beyond abstaining from veal, but good for her if she wants to make that kind of choice in her life.
And, as you can see in the picture, BVEGAN is a smoker.
I took the picture for my vanity plate collection because the irony made me smile. No red meat festering in your colon, but those lungs probably look a sight. I also wondered if she’d ever considered the environmental impacts of tobacco farming, which Dr Quandt seems to think is negative, but I’m on the fence about that. Then again, she probably didn’t care about environmental impact given what she did next.
BVEGAN pitched her cigarette butt out the window.
So I figured I’d help her get the attention she deserves as a littering jerk scumbag rather than just someone whose little hypocrisies (and let’s face it – we all have them) gave me a grin. It’s nice that you think you’re concerned about animal welfare, BVEGAN, but in practice you’re not. Cigarette butts are a plastic, slow to degrade and harmful to animals even beyond the birds and turtles that mistake them for food and choke to death. This puts aside the fact that you’re making the world suck a little more for us animals who like to enjoy what unblemished nature we can find. Not that you can find much of it where there’s not a cigarette butt lying around.
Want to further demonstrate your commitment to environmental issues, BVEGAN, aside from bumper stickers imploring me to make the humane choice and give up animal flesh and a $5 vanity plate? Next time you’re finished with a cigarette, take a look towards the center of your car’s dash, or maybe the center console. There’s this neat thing – kinda new, you might not have heard of it – called an ASHTRAY. Stub your butt out there. It conveniently collects them until you empty them out into an approved trash receptacle, minimizing litter and it even has the positive side effect of reducing the chance that you’ll cause a fire with your still lit butt.
If you’re not real fond of this idea because you don’t want ugly trash stinking up your car, well, now you know how the rest of us feel about our lawns, rivers, ponds and sidewalks.
I got a photo the other day, at no small personal risk, that I will send you, along these lines.
It’s for Nantucket Nude Beaches, and is a parking permit..
Please allow me to do a big ol’ wtf dance.
Hoo-fucking-ray.
Look, smokers, I know that you feel like you are persecuted. I’m not sure how I feel about the whole “no smoking in bars” thing, even though, personally, I love to go to a bar that is smoke-free.
But.
Why do y’all think that it’s okay to throw your cigarette butts on the ground?
Do you generally throw away your, say, coffee cup? Oh, you do? What’s the difference?
Oh, you are afraid that it’ll start a fire? Umm, okay, then put it out on the ground or on the side of the trash can. I’ve seen people throw butts on the group when they were 4 feet from a trash can.
Why, why, why?
Okay. Pet peeve satisfied for a little while.
Last week, I am walking down K Street behind two ladies in business suits, one smoking. The smoker then drops her cig-holding hand to her side, and after a short pause, drops the cigarette. Not an “oops, I dropped it” but a “and now I’ll just drop this subtle-like and my companion will not know I am a litterbug jerk”.
Or so she thought until I tapped her on the shoulder, handed her the sit-lit cig and said “excuse me, you just dropped this”.
That look of annoyance – priceless.
i hate litterbugs too, and i think it’s terrible to throw your butts out the window, but it’s no WORSE if this person does it than if anyone else does it. the whole “if you advocate for something then any tiny little thing you do that isn’t 100% perfect nullifies your entire position” line of reasoning is bullshit.
there’s simply no logical basis to it. it’s an irrational prejudice, inevitably directed at someone who is making a much greater positive contribution than the person spouting the prejudice. you know how much water she saves compared to you by not eating meat? you know how many acres of rainforest she saves compared to you? just based on the vegan vs. meat eating thing, she could throw a lot of cigarette butts out the window before she nullified the environmental benefits of her veganism over your dietary habits.
so yeah, blast her for throwing her butt out the window, but pretending that it has anything to do with her being vegan just highlights YOUR hypocrisy, not hers.
I guess you skipped over the bit in the middle that said “rather than just someone whose little hypocrisies (and let’s face it – we all have them) gave me a grin” huh?
Her action is no worse, except in so far as she’s encouraging me to take action to be a better person when she can’t bother to handle her litter in the most basic of manners. I have for her the same disdain I have for that self-important prig Bill Bennett who looks down his nose at other people’s personal lives while gambling up a storm.
I wonder if you’d take this same attitude if it was a preacher I was lambasting for misconduct rather than a vegan? And by the way, are you actually familiar with the definition of hypocrite? I don’t see where I’ve demonstrated myself to be doing one thing and calling for another.
Good for you. I’m an ex-smoker and I can’t stand it when people throw their butts out on the road. Someone chucked one into my car grill the other day on the Toll Road.
I see your perspective Don, but I gotta stand with Jen on this one. Seems to me that if her license plate were different and she had some different bumper stickers on her car you wouldn’t have even bothered being annoyed enough to take the picture.
And your line in there “rather than just someone whose little hypocrisies (and let’s face it – we all have them) gave me a grin” strikes me as a CYA comment to give yourself enough arguing room to go all out on her full blast for personal reasons beyond her littering.
I mean seriously, I hate people who toss cigarette butts out of their cars as much as anyone else, but man, this post is a whole other level of bitter, angsty, and kind of snobbish, imho, but a valid call, I suppose.
Great to see others starting to take action on this. I’d actually considered starting a blog dedicated to capturing the perps in the act of throwing out their butts… then I figured that the amount of negative press that a horde of drivers snapping pics would generate might lessen the impact of the message.
I ranted about this topic today over on my site enough, so I’ll stop while I’m somewhat ahead.
I’d love to have more but I’m not gonna endanger my life and that of others angling for a picture when I see someone with a cigarette. Maybe I’m an optimist but I’d like to think that if I shot a pic of everyone I saw with an open window smoking a cig that the majority wouldn’t be folks who were gonna litter with the butt.
This one was a happy accident since we were stopped in stop-and-go traffic and I was shooting for my personal amusement. Or because I’m a vegan-hater if you believe certain folks who have a persecution complex. :)