24 Hours has an interesting story today out of Vancouver, where City Hall has decided to jump in and take over a fairly successful cigarette butt recycling program because (GASP!) a tobacco company was found to be helping fund it. Instead of letting Imperial Tobacco get any positive press or PR (after more than a year of the program where they got zero credit), the City would rather have taxpayers foot the bill.

What?

Here’s what the bureaucracy says:

Deputy city manager Sadhu Johnston said Vancouver is now paying back $12,000 TerraCycle spent for the receptacles. He said the city is also taking over operating costs for butt collection, which had previously been funded through TerraCycle.

“We know their model — which is industry funding — but at that point (during initial talks last year) it wasn’t clear to us who their partners were,” Johnston said.

Our take: who cares if Imperial is picking up the tab?

Making the whole thing even weirder is that Vision Vancouver has long been a proponent of industry paying to clean up their own products. From their 2008 platform:

“The City can provide leadership, but we also need action from other levels of government, like laws that make producers responsible for the waste created by their products.”

Isn’t that precisely what Imperial was doing?

Further, Mayor Gregor Robertson says private sector involvement is key to his environmental goals:

“It's a long-term holistic planning approach with serious resources that are invested and a commitment to partner with public and private sectors and organizations and the community to deliver those results.”

Why can’t Imperial be one of those partners? If it’s a concern that Imperial will be advertising cigarette brands near these receptacles, ask them not to. But why should taxpayers rush in to fund this thing?

Like I said, I don’t get it.