Where are the bins?

  • 2007-10-10
  • Jane Hart, Belfast
Just a small suggestion to the city of Tallinn. I enjoyed a weekend trip to Estonia in August. I thought (as all visitors do, I'm sure) that your Old Town was beautiful, along with the girls. But I was disappointed to see so much litter around.
Most of the trash was cigarette butts. They filled up the cracks between the cobblestones, particularly outside the doors to shops and restaurants. The anti-smoking laws that have freed European bars from filthy second-hand smoke have created a new problem 's excessive littering.

I was particularly disappointed to see the workers of one restaurant on their break simply tossing their butts into a huge pile on the street. I asked them to please find a bin, and they looked at me with disgust.
There are two problems here 's people's attitudes toward littering, and the lack of bins. I noticed that even if people wanted to put their butts in a bin, there are very few in the Old Town. I suggest two things 's install more bins, and launch a campaign to make littering smokers feel guilty about dropping their butts.
 

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