To combat cigarette butts, French authorities use not only laws but also advertising
As RFI notes, this law applies not only to cigarette butts but also to dog excrement and chewing gum, and is part of a program to fight for environmental cleanliness. But it is cigarette butts that cause the greatest irritation and the most attention in society. There is a very strong and complex tradition in Paris, which is not so easy to break.
A cigarette butt, as is known, pollutes not only the immediate environment in the form of the sidewalk. It enters the wastewater and poisons the water with nicotine, lead, and arsenic. Then it gets treated, and we drink it again, all of which is an extra expense. For its part, the city hall installed an additional 30,000 bins with devices for extinguishing cigarettes. On average, they are located every hundred meters along the 2,900 meters of total Parisian sidewalk length.
The Paris city hall has long been trying to fight the harmful habit of Parisians throwing cigarette butts on the sidewalk. In vain. Probably, this tradition dates back to the time when the first sidewalks (Pont Neuf) or the first cigarettes (cigars) appeared. It is said that they were brought by Napoleon's soldiers from Spain (the Peninsular War, 1808-1814). But one thing is clear and obvious: ever since Parisians learned what cigarettes were and started smoking them, they always threw butts directly on the sidewalk or anywhere. The fashion began to spread with the appearance in France of the first cigarette manufacturing plant in 1842 in Gros-Caillou.
And Parisians always threw cigarette butts on the sidewalk. It was their privilege, a distinctive feature, a kind of chic compared to the more neat and clean provinces.
Recall how the husband mocks Thérèse Desqueyroux, who carefully stubs out cigarette butts (F. Mauriac, "Thérèse Desqueyroux"). The main heroine, who grew up in the Landes and finally managed to escape to Paris, retains provincial habits - she carefully stubs out her cigarette. For a Parisian, this is absurd. In the Landes, a forest could catch fire, but here in the city on a stone sidewalk, nothing will catch fire. It is also a sign that she is not becoming the free woman she wanted to be.
Cigarette butts on the sidewalks of Paris have always caused and continue to cause constant complaints from tourists. It is a detail that does not match the image of the capital of the world, the capital of fashion, the capital of culture, the city of light, etc. The first disappointment begins when a tourist, however well-disposed and favorably inclined towards Paris, sees a pile of cigarette butts on the sidewalk. And it is useless for us to make excuses, to say that this is our tradition, albeit not a very good one, that in the evening all the butts are first swept from the sidewalks onto the roadside, then washed into the drains with sewer water and everything becomes clean. That will not help. The negative impression remains. Incidentally, if you read memoirs, many of them describe a first impression of Paris as negative. Especially if that first impression was the Gare du Nord sometime in the 1920s-30s.
The Paris city hall has conducted campaigns more than once to convince residents that throwing cigarette butts on the sidewalk is bad. Garbage trucks for a long time carried a poster showing a terrible pile of smoking butts and an equally terrible figure stating that each year, poor municipal street cleaners have to sweep and remove 350 tons of cigarette butts from the streets of Paris. And one cigarette butt can easily poison 500 liters of clean drinking water.
The city hall tried to introduce a habit and fashion for personal ashtrays and even started producing and selling them at a symbolic price, but nothing helped. The harmful tradition exists not only on the street but also on café terraces, where - and this also somewhat surprises and even puzzles visitors - all customers shake off cigarette ash and throw butts directly on the ground. Until the complete ban on smoking in cafés, the same thing happened near the bar.
The logic was simple. The law that ashtrays must be changed each time a butt appears had not been repealed. Consequently, a waiter in a café should act accordingly if he wants to be considered a decent waiter. But if he does that, it will take up a large part of his time. He needs to serve as many customers as possible. And cigarette butts... with butts it's simple. In the evening, tables and chairs on the terrace are removed, the place is swept, and the problem is solved.
When smoking was still allowed in cafés, especially near the bar counter, bartenders in Parisian cafés reasoned the same way. There were no ashtrays on any counter in Parisian café bars. All cigarette butts and sugar wrappers were thrown directly on the floor, and in the evening everything was swept up. One bartender even told me that while sweeping the floor before closing, by the number of butts on the floor he could roughly estimate the takings. And now, when they no longer smoke there, perhaps he could estimate the takings by the number of sugar wrappers for coffee, but those are not the same amounts or scales. Traditions are changing...
Now, with the new law on cigarette butts, ashtrays have appeared on café terraces where smoking is still allowed. It turns out that the law on butts primarily affects the behavior and habits of waiters. Now, for a butt thrown on the floor of a café terrace, the fine may be imposed not on the customer but on the café owner. The customer can always claim that there was no ashtray on his table, and the person at fault for the butt ending up on the ground is not him but the waiter.
Tobacco in France has come a long way: first it was presented as a remedy for migraines and even called ambassador's herb, because it was brought to Paris by the French envoy to the Portuguese court, Jean Nicot (1530-1604). And since it was presented as a gift to Queen Catherine de Medici, it was also called 'Queen's herb' («l' herbe à la Reine»), and later more precisely – Nicot's herb (l'herbe à Nicot). And even later – in 1753 – Carl Linnaeus chose the name of Jean Nicot to designate tobacco and named the plant Nicotiana Tabacum. But initially, tobacco was snuffed. Smoking it only began under Louis XIII. It became fashionable then. The musketeers, as the elite of society, also smoked tobacco. At a recent exhibition dedicated to the musketeers at the Army Museum (Les Invalides), a collection of pipes belonging to them was presented.
The first tax on tobacco was introduced in France in 1621. Today, the French state successfully continues the traditions of Richelieu and Colbert, who used tobacco to enrich the royal treasury. And Colbert's statements about tobacco are almost prophetic. The introduction of a state monopoly in France (1674) finally established the principles of the state's attitude toward tobacco as a stable means of enrichment. Incidentally, that's when tobacco became one of the smuggled goods, which it remains today.
And today, tobacco brings a lot of money to the state treasury. In 2014 alone, the French treasury received 14 million euros from value-added tax on tobacco products.
And finally. In France, there is such a concept as 'awareness' (prise de conscience). Smoking was banned in the metro a long time ago, but people actually stopped smoking relatively recently. Probably, the same will happen with cigarette butts. For now, the municipal police are indifferent to violations of the law regarding cigarette butts on sidewalks, but it seems that as soon as the stage of 'awareness' arrives (awareness that one should act this way and not otherwise), everything will change. As one humorist said, the French cannot be forced to do something, but they can be trained.