underdog city

If you visit the web address displayed on the Can It butt receptacle, you will learn why cigarette litter is bad news. For instance, I learned that heavy metals of the least righteous kind leach from abandoned tobacco sticks into our groundwater, the Thea Foss Waterway, and Commencement Bay. My guess is that the flora and fauna living in those bodies of water don’t appreciate it, mostly because I can’t think of any living organisms that do appreciate being killed.

If you visit the web address displayed on the Can It butt receptacle, however, there’s a strong chance you’re not necessarily the target demographic of the Can It campaign. Actually, if you’re the type of nerd who photographs an ashcan for the sole purpose of capturing a web address so you can find out what more the city has to say about keeping your butt out of the bay, it doesn’t seem likely you’re the kind of person who throws cigarette butts on the ground in the first place.

Toward the end of 2007, the City of Tacoma distributed these bottom-heavy beauties to various places around downtown as part of the “Can It: Keep Your Butts Out of the Bay” pilot program, the purpose of which was to find effective ways of keeping butts off the ground and their toxins out of our ecosystem. The results of that study aren’t in yet, but in the meantime, let’s consider a question: In light of the recent nonstop vilification of smokers in this country, is it reasonable to expect them to care about the ramifications of their little cigarette butts?

Some smokers do, of course. Some smokers voluntarily isolate themselves in dark alleys with organically grown, hand-rolled tobacco sticks whose butts they then stow in their hemp-sweatshirt pockets — and do it with overflowing peace and tranquility. But what about smokers who feel cast out by society, banished to 25 feet away from every business entrance, cordoned off in makeshift outdoor smokers’ areas, scowled at, and unfairly taxed to high heaven? Some of them might get a certain amount of delight out of murdering plankton and flounders, even if only as a last angry act of nicotine rebellion.

Therefore, if we want litter-prevention efforts to work, what we really need is a way to appeal to the latter crowd. I believe that way is to make cigarette disposal fun for even the most disaffected, disenfranchised, anti-establishment, pessimistic, solipsistic, sociopathic smoker.

If, at the point at which the seriousness of Commencement Bay’s health meets the smallness of Tacoma’s ashcan budget, all we can afford are the receptacles pictured above, we’ve got to dress them up a little. The one in the photograph, which I found at Pacific Ave. and S. 14th, has the right idea with the Mardi Gras beads. The one sitting at the top of Frost Park, however, is completely unadorned, and you know what? Frost Park’s lovely water-down-the-steps display is also littered with bloated, waterlogged cigarette butts. Correlation? Perhaps.

If we’re working with a robust endowment, however, I’d like to recommend a new pilot study. This one will have local sculptors design eye-catching, gawk-worthy ashcans, prototypes of which the city will then purchase and distribute in Tacoma’s major business areas. Then let’s see if perhaps the allure of stuffing a cigarette butt into the end of a little girl’s die-cast ponytail, the hungry mouth of a frolicking granite sea otter, or the bronze eyeball of The Man himself is tempting enough to get even the least environmentally concerned smoker on the bandwagon. If the very act of disposing of a cigarette can become a way to fight the power, so much the better, I say. So much the better.

There are more cigarette litter details for nerds and diehard city-info fans here.