The more thoughtful smoker may use een asbak – ashtray, though drains also serve. Tossing een peuk into any hole in the street may have horrendous consequences. Take the shop in Bruges in a narrow street with old coal holes into the cellars. Surveying the damage that the fire had wreaked in her cellar, the owner complained, “Voorbijgangers gebruiken mijn keldergat als asbak – Passers-by use my cellar hole as an ashtray”.

One solution might be installing asbaktegels – ashtray tiles. These are sunk flush with the street and are a good resting place for peuken. But how many of these would be needed to be effective and they would surely trap high heels of smokers and non-smokers alike. Ghent has tried to solve this litter problem by installing posts, peukenpalen where you can stub out your cigarette. They must be working because 52 kilos of peuken are emptied from them each week, which makes you wonder what on earth they do with such a mountain of filters.

But this is a time to get away from the smells and noises of the city. So let’s head for the beach and fill our lungs with sea air. There is though no getting away from the problem, as you will be greeted by posters with “Ons strand is geen asbak – Our beach is not an ashtray”. The organisers of the campaign claim that peuken on the beach lead to ergernis en overlast – irritation and nuisance. At first I thought this is a bit strong: there’s plenty of sand and what harm can the occasional peuk stubbed out in the sand do?

Well a lot apparently. The numbers for a start: 4300 peuken per 100 metres of beach, which is astonishing, and you do feel for the poor soul who collected and counted them. And since one of the pleasures of a stay at the coast is a stroll along the waterline, the last thing you want is een vieze peuk tussen de tenen – a disgusting fag-end between your toes. It doesn’t end there. Once these castaways end up in the water they can kill: vissen verwarren de peuken met voedsel – fish confuse the butts with food. And they are not bio-afbreekbaar – bio-degradable.

Smokers may have feared they were a dying breed but in fact despite all the efforts to dissuade people, 32% of Belgians are regular smokers. So the peuken problem looks as if it’s here to stay.