National Nonprofit Presents 2019 Cigarette Litter Prevention Program Grant to Keep Dalton Whitfield Beautiful

Executive Director, Amy Hartline, poses with one of the specially ordered Ballot Bins to demonstrate how people can vote for one of two options using cigarette litter.

Keep America Beautiful®, the nation’s leading community improvement nonprofit organization, announced it has awarded a 2019 Cigarette Litter Prevention Program® grant to Keep Dalton-Whitfield Beautiful to help it combat the most commonly littered item in America. Keep Dalton-Whitfield Beautiful is one of 50 organizations receiving a Keep America Beautiful Cigarette Litter Prevention Program (CLPP) merit-based grant. Keep Dalton Whitfield Beautiful’s grant award of $2,000 will be used to install special “ballot bins” to encourage people to put their cigarettes in the right place. These bins allow people to “vote” using their cigarettes in a poll with two different options.  “We hope to make keeping our town clean more fun and interactive. That way everyone can feel more pride in the community they’ve created.”, said Executive Director, Amy Hartline.

Communities implementing the CLPP in 2018 reported an average 62 percent reduction of cigarette litter, even greater than the previous year’s average reduction of 52 percent. Cigarette Litter Prevention Program grant funding empowers communities to help mitigate the economic, environmental and quality of-life impact of cigarette butt littering. “Litter is both the smallest and largest problem at the same time,” said Jerred Jones, program director for the CLPP. “Keep America Beautiful is dedicated to educating consumers on the hazards of littering in public spaces and providing the tools to reduce litter. Access to ash receptacles and portable pocket ashtrays are crucial to changing littering behaviors.”

The CLPP, 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 decade, 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 America 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 bus stops, entrances to stores and public buildings, and the sidewalk areas outside of bars and restaurants, among others. The CLPP is supported by funding from Altria, Reynolds American, and the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company.

Visit www.KeepDaltonWhitfieldBeautiful.org to register for the KDWB newsletter or call 706-278-5001 to find out how you can volunteer or participate in events