Editor’s Journal – Smoke ’em if you got ’em just don’t dump ’em

By John Dunphy, Managing Editor
   Driving to my father’s house last weekend, I passed a woman at a stop light in Old Bridge who had just about enough of all those stinky, nasty cigarette butts clogging up the ashtray of her otherwise pristine Toyota Camry. To address the matter, she pulled the ashtray from its compartment and, in the span of time it took for the signal to change, upended the dusty, dirty contents outside the driver’s side door.
   Given our unseasonably warm weather of late, I was enjoying the lovely breeze blowing through the open window of my otherwise disheveled Nissan Sentra when I passed her. I popped my head out of the window and filled the lovely breezes with a few lovely words best left out of family publications like The Lawrence Ledger. While a guilty part in me regrets not pulling over at the busy intersection to sweep this apparently heavy smoker’s leavings into a trash bag, a less guilty part is pleased I at least let her know what she was doing was not acceptable and that people around her are not going to ignore it.
   It’s funny then that, just a couple years ago, I was more likely to stew over the incident in annoyed silence. Ten years ago, I was more likely to be the drive-by litter bug, dumping my own smoked smokes, oblivious to what my little present was doing to the world around me.
   It seems that now, more than ever in my own memory, people are becoming aware of their actions. They are becoming aware that things like how much they drive, what plastic does to the environment and how far their produce must travel before it reaches their favorite supermarket, affects not only the planet, but also themselves. Thus, people are driving less, or utilizing alternative means like the train. They are purchasing reusable shopping bags, which are becoming widely available at most supermarkets. They are patronizing local farms, or local businesses that carry organic, locally grown produce.
   However, as our friend in the shiny black Camry proved on Sunday, there are still many people who don’t know or don’t care, as long as they don’t have to deal with it. A lot of the time, those who don’t care truly don’t truly know the consequences of their actions, seeing the whole environmental movement as some concept unrelated to their busy, everyday lives. As Ralph Copleman, executive director of Sustainable Lawrence notes in his Sept. 13 column here in the Ledger, “We live in a throwaway world … People who do this are not necessarily bad people, they just haven’t learned this is no longer acceptable.”
   Maybe the next time Ms. Smoky McSmoker runs out of cigarette space, she’ll remember the crazy person in the little black sedan who shouted with incredulity at her deposit and think twice about making another one. Or maybe she’ll just ponder how people can be so rude as she crushes another butt under her heel at her favorite local park.
   I’m optimistic. People learn. I’m far from perfect, but I think I’m on the right track. It taken many years, many Marlboros tossed from car windows, food wrappers tossed wherever, for it to start to stick, but it’s sticking. Now look at me, yelling obscenities to strangers from my car window. Mom would be so proud.
John Dunphy is managing editor of The Lawrence Ledger. He can be reached at [email protected].