OCEAN CITY – The resort has expanded its cigarette disposal program with the addition of more than 20 new receptacles north of the Boardwalk.
Last week, Public Works Director Hal Adkins updated the Ocean City Coastal Resources Legislative Committee (Green Team) on efforts to expand the resort’s cigarette butt disposal program.
While the initial hope was to expand the program to each street end from the end of the Boardwalk to the Delaware line, committee members agreed in January to select roughly 20 locations for the first phase of an expansion.
Last week, Adkins announced more than 20 new cigarette butt receptacles – or butt huts – had been installed at the street ends at select locations in town.
“At one point, the discussion was do we install cigarette butt receptacles at the head of every street at the beach from 28th Street to the Delaware line,” he said. “That evolved into a smaller quantity.”
Last summer, resort officials implemented a two-pronged initiative to install butt huts on the side streets to the west of the Boardwalk in Ocean City.
In doing so, officials had hoped the containers would encourage smokers to properly dispose of cigarette butts after learning the town’s Boardwalk smoking ban had led to a larger issue of cigarette butt litter accumulating at the street ends adjacent to the Boardwalk.
At the same time the town installed its butt huts near the Boardwalk, a partnership with the Maryland Coastal Bays Program (MCBP) provided similar butt huts to private businesses throughout the resort.
Cigarette butts collected from both efforts were then shipped off to be recycled. To date, nearly 400,000 cigarette butts have been recycled through the two-pronged program.
By and large, officials have deemed the town-led initiative a success. And late last year, the committee agreed to expand the program to include more street ends before the start of the next summer season.
Councilman Tony DeLuca, Green Team liaison, told committee members last week the installation of butt huts at additional locations was the first step in an effort to expand the town’s program.
Adkins, however, noted the manpower needed to empty the butt huts.
“We have no problem, no issue installing them at the head of every single street from 28th Street to the Delaware line,” he said. “That’s a one-time effort. Our issue then becomes we don’t have the manpower to dump them.”
Gail Blazer, the town’s environmental engineer, said volunteers, including those with the town’s Dune Patrol, will be responsible for monitoring and emptying the additional butt huts.
“It’s going to take some time to figure out how often they need to be cleaned, how active it is …,” she said. “I think we selected them very strategically.”
Adkins told the committee last week the public works department will also replace some butt huts to the west of the Boardwalk with larger containers.
“Now that we completed the ones we just discussed we have gone back to our notes from last summer, and at a number of locations we are expanding the capacity of some of them down by the Boardwalk …,” he said. “There were a number of them that were overflowing.”
