Pennsylvania Turnpike program urges travelers to properly dispose of cigarettes

(WTAJ) — Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful is partnering with the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission to implement the “Cigarette Litter Prevention Program” (CLPP).

The CLPP will be implemented at up 17 service plazas and interchange access buildings across the state with a $20,000 grant received from Keep America Beautiful. The program will begin with a scan, or physical count, of cigarette butts and other tobacco related products littering each service plaza.

Ash receptacles will then be installed at the entrance to buildings and other transition points. Two additional scans will be performed, one midway through the year and a final count at the end of the program. The effectiveness will be measured by comparing the pre and post program scan of the physical count of cigarette butts and other tobacco related products.

“The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and our Sustainability Committee are proud to partner with Keep PA Beautiful to enhance current efforts to curb cigarette litter at our service plazas,” Keith Jack, Director of Facilities Operations and co-chair of the Turnpike’s Sustainability Committee, said. “With more than 550,000 daily users across our system, we also hope to bolster awareness to travelers about the issue of proper cigarette butt disposal with educational messaging and marketing campaigns and by placing cigarette ash receptacles at entrances to service plaza buildings and other high-volume transition points.”

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Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful has a partnership with TerraCycle to recycle and compost the cigarette butt waste that is collected. 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 percent were cigarette butts.

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