Voting with a cigarette butt? On the Haarentor campus, smokers can now use so-called ballot bins - bright yellow ashtrays that regularly provide students with more or less serious questions on how to "choke off".
Until now, ashtrays have stood somewhat bashfully in the corner. But since the beginning of April, they have been making a big splash on the Haarentor campus of the University of Oldenburg: a group of students have had so-called ballot bins installed in a central location in front of the canteen building and the lecture hall centre. The bright yellow, oversized ashtrays hang from lampposts along the central walkways.
But it is not just their high visibility that should help to ensure that fewer cigarette butts end up on the ground in future. The Ballot Bins are also an opinion monitor that encourages participation. They consist of two separate chambers - each representing an answer option and having its own hole for voting with a cigarette butt. The current voting status is visible at first glance as the front of the bins is transparent.
The 8 o'clock lecture - an April Fool's joke?
Just in time for the start of the summer semester, students Maria Pinsker, Julia Laux, Maren Harberts, Maximilian Fröhlich, Marina Kemper and Nele Feldkamp have provided the Ballot Bin on the Mensa square with a new poll: "Resolution for the start of the semester: 8 o'clock lecture" is written in the text field at the top. One hour after the replacement, you can already see what the Oldenburg students think of it: Answer option 2 "It's probably an April Fool's joke" is clearly in the lead.
"We think that the bins will help to ensure that there are fewer butts lying around on campus in future," says Pinsker. She is studying for a Master's degree in Sustainable Economics and Management and has been active as a plogger for over a year - collecting rubbish lying around on her regular jogging tours. "My friends and I have noticed how many cigarette butts are carelessly thrown on the ground," says Pinsker. According to her research, the filters consist of plastic and toxic substances such as lead, cadmium and arsenic, which ultimately accumulate in the soil, groundwater and the food chain.
Financing by the Presidential Board
Pinsker and her friends became aware of the Ballot Bins, which are already widely used in the UK, Luxembourg and Norway, through a report in the news magazine Spiegel. The group of friends presented the idea to the Presidential Board of the university - with success. The university management took over the financing of the first two bins, which were installed under the direction of Sabine Düser from the university's building management department during the lecture-free period in March. More will soon be installed on the Wechloy campus. The building management will take care of the cleaning, and the student network sneep e.V. is also supporting the project.
In the coming weeks, Oldenburg students will be able to vote on such elementary questions as: Veggie or classic? Poly or convertible? Werder or HSV? The results can be followed on Instagram . The Ballot Bins team is looking forward to more creative voting questions at
