Smoking is out
The 20th-century scourge of dog doo on the sidewalks of Paris has given way to the nuisance of tossed cigarette butts. While smokers continue to deploy their arms on the terrace of cafés and restaurants, the fight against butts on the ground is now underfoot.
Toxic, harmful to the environment and expensive to clean up – though good press for meticulous crows – throwing a cigarette butt on the ground in Paris can lead (since 2016) to a fine of 68 euros. But it’s a highly unlikely penalty.
Now, however, where there’s smoke in the park, there could be a fine. Corinne LaBalme sent in the news having seen a no-smoking sign at the entrance to Square des Batignolles (17th), her local green space. Since July that’s one of six parks and gardens that have been declared non-smoking zones as part of a trial policy by the City of Paris. Warning signs have been posted in Square Anne Frank (3rd), Square Yilmaz Guney (10th), Square Trousseau (12th), Jardin Henri Cadiou (13th) and Parc Georges Brassens (15th) as well. If adopted citywide later this fall, she writes, that nicotine hit in the park will cost 38 euros. Smokeless park-strolling is already enforced in Strasbourg.
Sparkling water is in
While Corinne was enjoying the smoke-free greenery in her neighborhood, I visited a new garden in the 11th, the city’s most densely populated arrondissement and one of its least green.
Open since July and officially inaugurated this month, Jardin Truillot is a 1.4-acre swath of path and greenery between Boulevards Richard Lenoir and Voltaire.
While one exit of Jardin Truillot faces Saint Ambroise Church (1860s), the opposite exit faces the sidewalk where Ahmed Merabet, a policeman on duty near the offices of Charlie Hebdo, was killed during the Islamist terrorist attack of January 7, 2015.
Considered the capital’s 500th green space, Truillot continues Paris’s contemporary vision of the role of green spaces in the city in reminding Parisians of the importance of agriculture, biodiversity and wine,
providing space for children to play – or at least place their toys,
promoting the drinking of city water, including sparkling city water,
and offering damp grass to sit or lie on.
Truillot is an uninspired choice of a name by the City of Paris; he’s a fellow who once owned the land. Nevertheless, to judge by the crowds on a sunny weekend, neighborhood residents are clearly pleased to see it open to the public after years of talk and planning. But since you can’t please all the people all the time, some neighbors are unhappy that Truillot remains open round the clock. So while garden-goers may take to nap on the grass during the day, several neighbors who overlook the garden claim that this strip of greenery is infringing upon their right to sleep (droit au sommeil) at night.
It may be little consolation on a sleepless night, but there must be quite a few smokers in Paris who would love have a balcony where they can step outside at 3am on a warm summer night and puff away with a view of a garden and a church, before flicking the butt out to the path below.
© 2018, Gary Lee Kraut, with assistance from Corinne LaBalme.