As part of a Keep the Bluegrass Beautiful project, free cigarette butt containers are available at the Woodford County Municipal Building – while they last.
“It could fit in your cup holder,” said Versailles City Councilmember Laura Dake, who is the Woodford County representative for Keep the Bluegrass Beautiful. “And then people presumably would not, hopefully, be throwing butts out the window.”
Dake said over 100 people have already picked up a portable ashtray and there are about 50 left.
“The hope is that the amount of cigarette litter is reduced because reducing cigarette butt litter tends to reduce overall litter,” she said. That’s because people are less likely to litter when an area is already clean, she said.
Dake said a Keep the Bluegrass Beautiful grant has also been responsible for the downtown cigarette butt receptacles. And in April, there will be a Main Street Clean Sweep opportunity for community members to help pick up litter.
“And a lot of that litter are cigarette butts,” she said.
These ashtrays are needed because cigarette litter is the No. 1 form of litter in America and it takes years for these filters, which are composed of plastic fibers called cellulose acetate, to decompose.
Nearly all – 95 percent – of cigarette filters are composed of these plastic filters, according to a Keep the Bluegrass Beautiful fact sheet.
And studies estimate that smokers litter as many as 65 percent of their cigarette butts, which leach toxic chemicals into the environment, leading to land, water and air pollution, according to Truth Initiative, a nonprofit committed to decreasing tobacco and nicotine use.
Keep The Bluegrass Beautiful is part of the Keep America Beautiful program and is staffed by Bluegrass Green Source in Lexington.