Cigarette litter prevention efforts in progress in Dewey Beach
For its fifth consecutive year of receiving a $20,000 Cigarette Litter Prevention Program grant from Keep America Beautiful, Keep Delaware Beautiful is now partnering with the Town of Dewey Beach. The initiative includes installing eight cigarette butt receptacles and conducting outreach campaigns to educate residents and visitors on the environmental impact of cigarette litter.
Emphasizing the importance of responsible disposal and community engagement, Keep Delaware Beautiful aims to reduce litter and enhance community aesthetics through this collaborative effort. Public messaging and infrastructure placement are the two primary types of cigarette littering interventions being implemented.
Officials from the Town of Dewey Beach agreed to install and maintain eight cigarette butt receptacles, with the possibility of more in the future. Receptacles have been strategically placed in public areas throughout the town and in front of local businesses. Committed to keeping the community clean, participating businesses include Grotto Pizza, Jungle Jim's Total Pet Care, Starboard Sauce, Nalu and Marley's Smoke Shop.
To further reinforce the message that cigarette butts are indeed litter, outreach efforts include marketing materials and messaging displayed on the full back of five DART beach buses. This high-visibility campaign aims to educate residents and visitors about the environmental impact of cigarette litter, encouraging responsible disposal practices.
"The Town of Dewey Beach greatly appreciates the Keep Delaware Beautiful program and partnership between our two organizations. The idea to contact KDB was suggested by one of our Dewey citizens" said Bill Zolper, town manager, Town of Dewey Beach. "The free cigarette butt receptacles were placed in several locations around and with the help of some of our businesses has been a huge success. Every town in Delaware should be participating in this program.“
“The Town of Dewey Beach has been an outstanding partner for our program. The Delaware beach towns deserve to be clean,” said Jessica Catts, community clean up manager for Keep Delaware Beautiful. “Having ash receptacles available in town, combined with anti littering marketing are key strategies in reducing cigarette litter.”
The Cigarette Litter Prevention Program, created by Keep America Beautiful in 2002, is the nation’s largest program aimed at eliminating cigarette butt and cigar tip litter. Since its inception, the program has been successfully implemented in more than 1,800 urban, suburban and rural communities nationwide. Over the past 10 years, participating communities have consistently cut cigarette butt litter by 50 percent based on local measurements taken in the first four months to six months after program implementation.
Research has shown that even self-reported “non-litterers” often don’t consider tossing cigarette butts on the ground to be “littering.” Keep Delaware Beautiful has found that cigarette butt litter occurs most often at transition points—areas where a person must stop smoking before proceeding into another area. These include parking lots and entrances to restaurants and bars.
For more information, go to keepdelawarebeautiful.com.
