How to deal with litter bugs

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another Cecil’s World in Print. I don’t know about you, but there is one thing that really upsets me and that is someone littering.

It was a beautiful summer morning and I was on my way to work when it happened. I had the window down, enjoying the fresh morning air, when I stopped for a red light. That’s when I saw this lady look at me, smile and thumb a cigarette butt out of her window. I could not believe it. I wanted to scream at the lady and say, “Why are you being a litter bug?”

But I didn’t. Instead, I stared at her and shook my finger back and forth indicating that what she did was bad. Of course, she looked at me like I was a nut and drove off.

This was just one lady. Just think about how many people do this every day. The next time you stop at a busy intersection and you’re waiting to turn, look on the ground and you will see thousands of cigarette butts on the ground — not hundreds, I mean thousands.

When I was young, I was taught by my grandparents that you should not litter and I did not.

When my son was young, he was taught the same golden rule. I do not think the average person thinks throwing a cigarette out is considered littering.

Wrong! One little cigarette can cost you big bucks if you are caught and, believe me, if I was a police officer, I would be writing a lot of tickets for littering.

In 2004, authorities collected $300,000 in fines from people littering. In South Carolina, you could be fined as much as $1,000, plus court costs; get 30 days in jail; earn a criminal record and have to perform community service.

And cigarettes and cigarette butts are considered litter. That’s right. If you are a smoker, more than likely you throw cigarettes out of the car instead of putting them in the ash try. Now I know some new cars do not have ash trays, but that does not mean you can throw it out the window. If you smoke in your car, carry something to put the butt in.

Now, there is something we can do about people littering. You can become a litter buster. That does not mean you can go out and bust someone in the mouth for littering, even though you might feel that way.

If you spot someone throwing something out of their vehicle, you can become a litter buster.

Grab your phone, call (877) 7LITTER (754-8837) or dial #LB on your Cingular or Alltel cell phone toll-free and report the location, time and the litterbug’s license number. This person will then be sent a “courtesy letter” informing the owner of the vehicle that someone saw litter being thrown from this vehicle. It will also inform them that if a law enforcement officer would have witnessed this, they would have been fined. The courtesy letter lets them know that someone is watching all the time.

I can hear it now, some of you are saying, “It’s only a cigarette, it will disintegrate in a couple of days.”

Wrong. Cigarette butts are not biodegradable. They are going to be there for a long time.

Let’s make a difference. Stash the trash in the right containers and not on our beautiful roads and beaches. If you are smoking while you are reading this column, make sure you put it in the right container — not on the floor or in someone’s yard.

See you next week, right here in the Morning news and on the tube.

— Cecil Chandler is a veteran reporter at WBTW News13. His column appears Mondays in the Morning News.