Paris cracks down on cigarette butts

PARIS is almost doubling fines for dropping cigarette butts, faced with having to collect around 350 tonnes of them each year.

The current fine is €35 but this is being increased to €68 from September.

The fine is also for dirtying the streets generally, including letting dogs poop on them, or (people) urinating in the street.

It will be brought in over the next few weeks, the mairie says, but it will not enforce fines for cigarette butts for a few months while a programme of installing 30,000 new bins equipped with a facility for their disposal, is completed.

Currently fines for dropping cigarette butts are rarely enforced.

Last year there were 25,461 fines related to dirtying the streets, but they were mostly for other things: 11,248 concerned people putting out their bins too early or leaving them out too long after rubbish collection, 2,507 were for dog poop and 2,189 were for ‘pouring out urine’.

In a separate initiative the mairie of the 9th arrondissement has put out cigarette butt collection boxes. A company will recycle them into boards that can be used in the building industry.

Photo: Waferboard