Justice
Boston's Playful New Campaign to Get Smokers to Stop Littering
The city’s “Neat Streets” initiative encourages residents to answer poll questions using their discarded cigarette butts.
Boston, like many other cities, has a litter problem. But it recently rolled out an initiative to manage the disposal of cigarette butts—the most common form of litter worldwide.
In addition to their obvious health hazards (smoking is still the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.), cigarettes pose a serious environmental hazard if left lying on the street. Not only do discarded cigarette butts attract harmful bacteria and threaten nearby plants and animals, but they can also take up to ten years to decompose.