As the butts pile up, her indignant ire smolders

Scattered around my desk are various letters requesting help. One is from a pilot unhappy with the FAA. Another from a woman complaining about the California Highway Patrol. Another is over a contested hospital bill. Another involves a couple’s dealings with a lending institution.

I appreciate that they think the newspaper can help them. Sometimes we can, but often we spend time on perceived problems that, for one reason or another, don’t pan out.

But the one constant over the years is that people keep bringing us their problems -- almost as if we’re their last hope.

Everybody, it seems, has that one thing that drives them crazy.

And that has drawn me to Melinda Peirce’s letter. Her gripe isn’t with a federal agency or a hospital or the bureaucracy.

Her problem is cigarette butts.

Disgusting, lipstick-smudged, water-saturated, still-smoldering cigarette butts.

What drives her nuts is that people flick them on sidewalks or into gutters or onto lawns. And with total impunity, she says. She’s even seen bus drivers do it.

This is her cause. She wants me to join her.

It’s not a cause I’d considered before. I asked Peirce why she embarked on it.

“I don’t have a car, and when you’re walking around and riding bikes and sitting at bus stops,” she says, “I can count at least 5,000 cigarette butts in a trip per day.”

Perhaps she’s exaggerating to make her point -- I hope she’s not actually counting -- but she says she’s serious about the issue. She’s written to transit agencies and, this week, will write to municipalities.

Any response so far? No, she says. “Maybe they just don’t care. Maybe they don’t mind having their cities trashed with cigarettes.”

With all the problems in the world, what bothers her about cigarette butts? “The filth,” Peirce says. “Trying to find a clean place to stand or walk or sit down for a second.”

She says she’s researched the matter and that it costs taxpayers $41 million a year to clean up litter, including cigarettes. She says 900,000 butts wash up on California shores each day.

I cannot personally verify either of those figures, but I’m sure someone can. Even if they’re off by a few hundred butts or so.

Lo and behold, there’s a website called CigaretteLitter.org that shares Peirce’s contempt for cigarette-droppers. It says, “While most Americans are intolerant of most forms of litter, many people don’t seem to see cigarette filters as litter.” It says the butts take many years to decompose and are not made of biodegradable cotton, as many people apparently think.

Exactly, Peirce says.

Peirce, 42, is bringing her campaign from Bozeman, Mont., where she lives and to which she’ll return in July. She’s living with relatives in Arcadia and Monrovia while in the midst of two years of surgeries and treatment for sleep apnea. Despite working throughout her adult life, she says she’s attending adult classes in Monrovia to get her high school equivalency degree so she can pursue a job as a park ranger.

At her most charitable, Peirce thinks people might simply discard their cigarettes absentmindedly. She’s taken it upon herself to remind people that the butts belong in receptacles, and that has met with the predictable range of responses from apologies to cold stares.

Well, I remind her, there are bigger issues. “It might be petty to some, but like my teacher said, if you don’t use your voice, it’s never heard. Even the small stuff has to be talked about.”

Not that she thinks this is small. Picking up someone’s cigarette butts, she says, “would be like cleaning up some kid’s puke. Why ask Caltrans to do it?”

Let me leave you with that mental image.

I ask Peirce why she came to the newspaper for help.

“Just for some kind of article reminding people that littering is against the law,” she says. “Maybe they’ll take more responsibility for where they live.”

Talking to Peirce reminds me all over again that everybody’s got a cause. In her case, I feel more pressure because I have a strong suspicion I might be the only newspaper ally she’ll find.

So, I’ll do what I can:

People, please, quit tossing your cigarette butts on the ground.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns:

www.latimes.com/parsons