Hey buddy! You dropped your cigarette by mistake

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‘It’s a great idea,” says Cindy Paquet, when told that the city is considering stepping up enforcement to tackle the problem of cigarette butts on city streets.

The manager of Kelly’s bar on Jasper Avenue says her staff has had to sweep butts every day from the front and back of the establishment since a ban on indoor smoking was introduced last year.

The issue came up in June, when city council’s public works committee asked city staff to explore how an enforcement aspect could be included in the Capital City Clean Up program, a litter prevention program developed by the city.

Edmonton’s Downtown Business Association recently piloted a project on awareness, which included business owners advertising about the problem of butt litter and providing more ashtray receptacles outdoors.

On Aug 22, the council committee looked at ways to expand these ideas elsewhere in the city, with a greater focus on enforcement.

Jane Batty, one of the city councillors for Ward 4, which includes downtown and Whyte Avenue, says the committee will also be looking at ways to encourage businesses to set up receptacles and to encourage smokers to use them, and will even explore whether putting ashtrays out on the streets is a city responsibility.

David AitkEn, the city’s complaints and investigations director, says that many people simply don’t consider throwing cigarette butts on the ground to be littering.

He says the new plan might mean a bylaw enforcement officer would confront someone who threw their butt on the ground, ask them to pick it up and put in a receptacle and fine them if they failed to do so.

“We’ll be less tolerant of it,” he says.

Aitken points out that of all the $260 littering fines laid by the Edmonton Police Service, only 10 per cent are related to people tossing cigarette butts.

Councillor Michael Phair, who represents Ward 4 along with Batty, says the emphasis should be on more education and more receptacles, with fines used as a “last resort,” since prosecutions of city bylaws, which can be appealed, take up staff time and use scarce resources.

Phair also says that people involved in past community clean-ups have told him butts have always been a major contributor to litter.

“It’s not a new issue,” Phair explains, and adds he doesn’t think the new smoking ban in bars has increased the problem. “Where they are may have changed a bit, but I’m reluctant to say it’s increased.”

But Aitken says since the 2005 bylaw sent smokers outside, there’s been “twice as many” butts that used to go into indoor ashtrays thrown on the ground.

Cindy Paquet agrees with Aitken, saying there were very few butts outside her bar’s entrances before the bylaw came into effect.

Kelly’s put up signs urging smokers to butt their cigarettes in the back-door receptacles installed by the bar, but she says people may be ignoring them because they are “a little annoyed” at the new bylaw.

Paquet, who is a smoker herself, says fining those “ignorant” smokers who still don’t use the receptacles might be the best way to make them do so.

But she also pointed out that the city wouldn’t allow her bar to install a receptacle at the front door, saying it was too unsightly for Jasper Avenue.

Contrary to some reports, including enforcement in Edmonton’s clean-up strategies is separate from any plans to increase or introduce new fines. City officials say fines will be reviewed sometime next year, once a bylaw consolidation takes place. V

Hey buddy! You dropped your cigarette by mistake

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