Circles on the asphalt, or what is the chalk of shame in India (8 photos)

Brightly colored circles, drawn by hand with chalk, began to appear on the roads of India. Uninformed people thought it was a children's game. Others were scared - what are these terrible warnings?





But in fact, this was an attempt to draw attention to a huge problem in India - no one throws cigarette butts in the trash!

Who and why draws circles on the asphalt

A funny youth trend took place in India, or rather in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Instead of picking up and cleaning up discarded cigarette butts, young people have started to highlight them by drawing circles around them with chalk in a campaign called "Chalk of Shame."



A typical section of pavement in India

India is currently trying to introduce plotting, but it's like a drop in the bucket. Plotting is a practice where you go jogging or exercising and pick up light litter from the road. It's quite popular in Sweden and the rest of the world.

However, it only makes sense in clean communities like Sweden or Japan. In India, plotting quickly turns into carrying heavy bags over a distance, as much trash can be collected in one run (if the sidewalks are not completely occupied by vendors or trash).





You can spend a whole pack of chalk in one walk

Therefore, plotting is not an option in India at the moment, you can’t take everything with you. They found another way out - to outline the trash with chalk, limiting themselves to cigarette butts.

A global cigarette butt problem



Caption: Smoking is a choice, but littering is not! As if everyone in India understands English

In fact, India is far from the most littered country. Cigarette butts are the most common type of litter on the roads almost everywhere. For some reason, smokers do not think that they litter, because the butts are so small. But the point is that filters and other elements of cigarettes do not decompose as quickly as paper, and they contain quite a lot of microplastics.

There is a very interesting statistic:

4.5 trillion of the 6 trillion cigarettes sold worldwide each year do not end up in a trash can or ashtray, but are simply thrown along the side of the road or on the sidewalk.



At least this is in Hindi. Is it written "SHAME ON YOU"?

That means not even half of them make it to the trash cans. Smokers, what's wrong with you!?

And these circles around cigarette butts on the road were supposed to appeal to the conscience of smokers and show that the entire road is actually covered with them, they are not so invisible.

Many countries, including Italy, Singapore and the UK, impose huge fines for discarded cigarette butts, but in India there are currently no such rules.



Fashionable youth fights with the common people who live by the thousand-year-old habit of throwing everything underfoot

Although the country banned smoking in all public places in 2008, the ban turned out to be not very effective, as evidenced by the abundance. In general, India has many sensible laws, the point is that almost all of them do not work.

Do the circles on the asphalt help?

In fact, there was some effect. The owners of kiosks and eateries, around which there were the most circles, ended up placing trash cans at the entrance so that they could throw their trash in them.



Women at the factory sort the collected cigarette butts so that...

But the smokers themselves were very unhappy. After all, this circle is direct evidence that he smoked in a public place (it is supposedly prohibited).

Some even threatened to call the municipal authorities on these draftsmen, ignoring the fact that they themselves were breaking the law at that moment.



Make stuffing for plush toys! Would you buy one for your child?

But unexpectedly, the Chalk of Shame went viral among… women with children. No mother wants her child to start smoking. And they turned tracing the cigarette butt with chalk into a game with the child, so that he would also remember that it was shameful.