As printed in the Pickens County Progress, February 16, 2023
By Dan Pool, Editor
Keep Pickens Beautiful, through a $2,500 grant, installed 34 cigarette disposal containers, allowing them to recycle 3,500 cigarette butts in the past six months.
The first 10 containers were installed in 202 with 24 more added last year through a Keep America Beautiful Cigarette Litter Prevention Program. Two of the plastic containers have since disappeared.
Most of the KPB containers bearing their logo are spread around downtown Jasper, with others at the Imerys plants in Marble Hill and Whitestone, one at the convenience store on the corner of Highway 53 and Hill City Road. [Note there are other cigarette containers, most made of metal, found around downtown, not belonging to KPB.]
KPB President Vered Kleinberger said the program was immediately successful. In areas where KPB volunteers previously picked up numerous butts, once the containers arrived there were virtually no butts on the ground.
According to Keep America Beautiful, cigarette butts are the most commonly littered item, comprising nearly 20 percent of all litter. The 2021 report estimates that 9.7 billion cigarette butts are littered in the united States each year, and four billion of these are in waterways, according to an article on National Library of Medicine website.
Kleinberger said it is encouraging to see people dispose of them properly given an option. “We made it easy and they do it,” she said. Prior to adding three containers to the plaza where Stegall Street connects to South Main, they would pick up hundreds of butts from downtown events; after the containers arrived just two or three are found.
Under the grant, twice a year KPB must empty all 32 containers, package and ship the butts to TerraCycle in Santa Fe, NM. The company breaks the old butts down, melts the plastic into balls suitable for making picnic tables and other items, composting tobacco scraps and recycling the paper.
Kleinberger estimates with a full-year having all 32 containers in action, they will easily surpass 5,000 cigarette butts recycled.
Things got strange though, when the big windstorm of January hit. KPB volunteers noticed several of the lids of their containers had blown off, even though they had been secured with screws and wouldn’t possibly release without breaking the plastic.
They found that odd and also odd was several other lids had been opened and then re-attached improperly – not lining up straight.
“I gave the benefit of the doubt,” said Kleinberger. “Why would someone be opening the containers? So we found some of the screws and put them back together.” On several the screws had disappeared entirely, so they made a temporary fix with tape.
Then two days later, they noticed that a few of the containers had been opened again with the tape messed up. “So we knew it had clearly had to be someone messing with them,” she said. “We switched to hex bolts where you had to have a tool to open them.”
The loss of a few discarded cigarette butts isn’t a problem but th improper reassemble allows the tops to blow away in heavy winds and it requires KPB have someone regularly check that the containers are still intact – adding another duty to volunteers.
Kleinberger said they had a couple of discussions about why someone would mess with them. She says the insides of the containers are as nasty as you would imagine.
“Oh man, it’s like a cesspool in there,” she said. “You open it up and it will knock you down.”
A theory from one KPB volunteer is someone is cracking them open to get partially-smoked cigarettes. Kleinberger said they don’t know this for sure, but it’s the only reason they can fathom.
“I feel sorry for someone if that is what is happening,” she said.