Keep Delaware Beautiful, state parks team up on cigarette litter prevention program

Keep Delaware Beautiful was recently awarded a $20,000 Cigarette Litter Prevention Program grant by Keep America Beautiful.

It is sharing the grant with the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control's Delaware State Parks, as both agencies are dedicated to eradicating litter and beautifying Delaware. Communities implementing the CLPP in 2021 reported an average 51 percent reduction of cigarette litter.

As part of the grant program, Keep Delaware Beautiful is focusing on two primary types of cigarette-littering interventions, through both public messaging and infrastructure placement. Delaware State Parks is installing and maintaining cigarette butt receptacles in state parks throughout Delaware, aligning with the Keep DE Litter Free initiative launched by Gov. John Carney in 2019.

"DNREC is excited to partner with Keep Delaware Beautiful to help mitigate the economic, environmental and quality-of-life impacts of cigarette littering in our state parks," said DNREC Secretary Shawn M. Garvin. "As we celebrate Earth Month in April, we encourage Delawareans to take pride in our shared public lands and help Keep Delaware Litter Free."

"Although most of the parks are smoke-free areas, cigarette litter continues to be a problem in our state," said Jessica Catts, Community Clean Up manager for Keep Delaware Beautiful. "Access to ash receptacles and the dissemination of public education are useful tools to help reduce the most commonly littered item in our litter stream.”

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 to six months after program implementation.

Research has shown that even people who consider themselves non-litterers often think tossing cigarette butts on the ground doesn’t count. Keep Delaware Beautiful has found that cigarette butt litter occurs most often at transition points – areas where people must stop smoking before proceeding into another area. These include parking lots, entrances to parks and public buildings, and sidewalk areas around and in the parks, among others.

Keep Delaware Beautiful was formed in 2016 with the purpose of fostering and promoting Keep America Beautiful programs focused on litter prevention, community beautification and minimizing the impact of solid waste in Delaware.

For more information about the program, go to keepdelawarebeautiful.com.