Daily Dose of Common Sense

Ever driven an ashtray? If you’ve rented a car that has been driven by a heavy smoker, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The smell lingers and gets stale. It’s awful. Hurray for the two major car rental companies who just announced they will ban smoking in their rental cars. It’s about time.

Beginning Oct. 1, Avis and Budget will become the first major rental-car companies to ban smoking in their entire North American fleets and to impose a cleaning fee of up to $250 on customers who smoke in the cars.

“The No. 1 request we get is for a smoke-free car,” says John Barrows, spokesman of the Avis Budget Group, the parent company. He says a common customer complaint is a car that smells of smoke, adding, “We’re addressing both concerns.”

Barrows says employees who drive the vehicles are no longer allowed to smoke and the cars will undergo a new inspection upon return. He says it costs the company more to clean a smoky car, because it often has to be taken out of service longer.

Now, we’re not saying people don’t have a right to smoke. They do. But, it’s one thing to smoke in your own car, where the stink is your own problem. It’s a whole other ball of odor to smoke in a car that doesn’t belong to you. What you do in a rental car affects a lot of other people. And, smoke is one of the worst pervasive odors. That smell cannot be completely removed. Ever.

Just ask hotels. The smell of cigarette smoke is so bad over time that you can’t even have non-smoking rooms next to smoking rooms. They had to create entire FLOORS where smoking is prohibited. And, a hotel employee once told me that in order to change a room from a smoking room to a non-smoking room, everything in the room had to be replaced: the furniture, the carpet, and even the wallpaper and/or paint.

So, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Just do it in your own space.

Photo courtesy of Flickr: johntrainor

If you’re a reader of this blog, you already know how we feel about cigarette butts.

So, imagine how happy I was today to pass a Japanese tourist discretely smoking and using this product. It’s a tiny portable ashtray with extinguisher. Genius!

Is it any wonder why the Japanese were just named the world’s best tourists?

Why do smokers get a pass on the littering front? Last time I checked, throwing trash where it doesn’t belong was frowned upon. Yet so many butts lie on our sidewalks, streets, and parks that it is the number one type of litter in America. Don’t these folks remember the Crying Indian from the ’70s?

I see it every day. I live in a city and see folks smoking and tossing, smoking and tossing, all day long. Frequently, the cigarette is still burning. Throwing a cigarette butt on the ground is LITTERING. Why, exactly, are our collective streets, sidewalks, and roads your ashtray?

It is estimated that several trillion cigarette butts are littered throughout the world each year. Are they biodegrable? Not really, according to the research we found.

Various sources have stated that cigarette filters take 18 months to 10 years to degrade. It is safe to say that the cellulose acetate fibers in cigarette filters, like other plastics, are with us for some time after they are discarded.

We’re asked not to litter by fast food companies, by drink companies, by the government, and everyone else who mass produces a product. Why aren’t the tobacco companies doing anything to encourage the proper disposal of their product? We’re not sure. It seems like a fairly simple thing to do, and certainly wouldn’t discourage smokers from lighting up. But, people should know NOT to litter without being told. What, were you raised in a barn?

Oh, P.S.: Props to all the businesses that put out cigarette disposal bins on the sidewalk in front of their doors.