Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful is partnering with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) to implement the Cigarette Litter Prevention Program (CLPP) at 14 state welcome centers. A grant of $20,000 for the program was awarded to Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful from the national organization Keep America Beautiful.

The CLPP program began with a scan or physical count of cigarette butts and other tobacco products at each participating visitor center. Ash receptacles will be installed at each of the building's points of entry. Two other scans will be performed, one midway through the year and a final count at the end of the program.

Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful has a partnership with TerraCycle to expand the program to include recycling and composting of the cigarette butt waste. Cigarettes collected through CLPP are shipped to TerraCycle, where the various materials that make up a cigarette are separated and processed. The filters are melted into hard plastic that can be remolded to make new recycled industrial products, such as plastic pallets. The residual tobacco and paper are separated out and composted in a specialized process.

According to Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful's 2019 Pennsylvania Litter Research Study, over 500 million pieces of litter were found on Pennsylvania's roadways. Of the total estimated litter, 186.2 million or 37.1% were cigarette butts.

Cigarette butts that are thrown on the ground can contaminate soil and ground water with chemicals and heavy metals. They also fatally impact birds, animals, and marine creatures, which often mistake them for food. The filters, made of cellulose acetate, never fully disappear from the environment.

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% based on local measurements taken in the first four to six months after program implementation. Learn more at http://www.kab.org.