Paris Installs Cigarette Snuffers on Trash Bins PARIS - Ever since France banned smoking in public places more than four years ago, Parisians have felt little compunction about throwing their cigarette butts into the streets and gutters, overwhelming the city's ability to keep them clean. A stroll through parts of Paris on weekend mornings is a little like walking in an ashtray. Now the city is quietly trying something new in hopes of easing the problem, attaching little ribbed resin disks to public waste bins where smokers can put out their cigarettes. But without much publicity, it may be a forlorn experiment in a city with a thriving night life where more than 30 percent of the population still smokes, including nearly a third of 17-year-olds. And even a public campaign would face big obstacles: the authorities have already increased taxes on cigarettes and banned most advertisements for tobacco, but smoking has not lost its coolness. "The fact that smoking is still seen as a positive thing holds back any measures meant to change the habits of smokers," said Céline Fournier, a spokeswoman for the organization Droits des Non Fumeurs, the Rights of Nonsmokers. According to Damien Steffan, a spokesman for the Paris City Council, Parisians produce nearly 350 tons of cigarette waste each year, much of it tossed onto the sidewalks or the grass. Stéphanie Asplanato, 24, may be typical. She was smoking recently outside the BHV, a department store in the center of Paris. "I do throw my butts on the ground," she confessed, after tossing her cigarette on the sidewalk. I'm not proud of it, but what else am I supposed to do with them? To answer people like Ms. Asplanato, the city intends to install 10,000 of the little disks - called éteignoirs, or "snuffers" - on a third of the city's 30,000 public garbage bins by the end of the year, with the rest over time. "The objective is to make people understand that, like dog excrement, cigarette butts are waste, and they shouldn't be discarded on the ground," said François Dagnaud, deputy mayor in charge of cleanliness and waste management. "The difficulty for us is to succeed in changing the way people see a cigarette butt," Mr. Dagnaud said. Education is the answer, he insisted, not penalties. By law, anyone who litters is subject to a fine of 35 euros, or about $43, but that rarely happens. So fining negligent smokers is "not a priority," he said. "We can't put a policeman behind every smoker," Mr. Dagnaud added. The program fits well with some of the other moves of Paris's environmentally conscious Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, who has taken steps to reduce car traffic, created bus lanes and introduced the Vélib" bicycle-sharing program. But Mrs. Fournier, the smoking foe, thinks the soft approach is doomed. The authorities "need to take action," she said, adding that she doubted the "symbolic" initiative would be enough to keep cigarette butts off the streets. Madeleine Nakaa, 70, said she doubted that smokers would make the effort to walk to a trash bin, which are installed in Paris, on average, 100 yards apart. "Smokers are careless and unconcerned with the issue," she said. Even if Parisians are skeptical, some visitors think people are capable of change. Doriane Cotter-Lockard, 46, of California, has been to Paris a few times and suggested that the city would move at its own pace. "I am already amazed that people stopped smoking in restaurants here!" she said. And perhaps Parisians will come in time to dispose of their butts more responsibly. But first, smokers would have to understand the purpose of the black disks. Indeed, with a diameter of two and a half inches, they are smaller than a hockey puck and do not exactly stand out. But Mr. Dagnaud is mostly counting on newspapers and word of mouth to get the message out; no official awareness campaign is planned, he said. A previous program was a failure. Instead of a resin circle, the snuffer was a piece of stainless steel with holes where smokers would rub their cigarettes to extinguish them, before dropping the butts into the fire-resistant plastic trash bag below. But the plates soon disappeared, stolen and sold for the metal. The Vélib" program, introduced in 2007, has had similar problems with vandalism and theft. And so far, the new snuffers have barely made an impact. Sarah Pignier, 30, an artist, was having a beer with friends on the terrace of a cafe, Le Carrefour. Will the snuffers work? "They should put ashtrays around bars, and not snuffers on trash cans, because that is where we smoke," she said. In another bar in the Marais neighborhood, a dozen men stood during happy hour, all of them smoking less than a yard from a trash can affixed with a snuffer. None of them noticed it; the sidewalk in front of the bar was filled with cigarette butts. When told what the device was for, they looked at it with disappointment. "Is that it?" one of them asked. Olivier Jablonski, 48, declared that this "piece of rubber" was simply too ugly. He tossed his head with disdain: "I mean, it's Paris!"