National Nonprofit Provides Grant Funding, Resources to Help Savannah Address Cigarette Litter
Savannah, GA (June 15, 2020) – Keep America Beautiful®, the nation’s largest community improvement nonprofit organization, today announced it has awarded a $10,000 2020 Cigarette Litter Prevention Program (CLPP) grant to Keep Savannah Beautiful to address cigarette litter in the city of Savannah.
Keep America Beautiful provided individual merit-based grants, totaling more than $500,000, to 47 organizations throughout the country, including Keep Savannah Beautiful. Grants were presented to Keep America Beautiful affiliates, local governments, business improvement districts, downtown associations, parks and recreation commissions, and other organizations dedicated to eradicating litter and beautifying their communities. Communities implementing the CLPP in 2019 reported an average 51 percent reduction of cigarette litter.
As part of the 2020 grant program, Keep America Beautiful is focusing on three primary types of cigarette littering interventions. Applicants will have the opportunity to focus on cigarette litter reduction through public messaging, infrastructure placement, or a combination of both.
“The Cigarette Litter Prevention Program grants empower communities to help mitigate the economic, environmental, and quality-of-life impact of cigarette littering,” said Jerred Jones, program director for the CLPP. “Access to ash receptacles and the dissemination of public education are useful tools to help reduce the most commonly littered item in our litter stream.”
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 percent based on local measurements taken in the first four months to six months after program implementation.
Research has shown that even self-reported “non-litterers” often don’t consider tossing cigarette butts on the ground to be "littering." Keep America Beautiful has found that cigarette butt litter occurs most often at transition points—areas where a person must stop smoking before proceeding into another area. These include bus stops, entrances to stores and public buildings, and the sidewalk areas outside of bars and restaurants, among others.
The Cigarette Litter Prevention Program is supported by funding from Philip Morris USA; RAI Services Company; and the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company.
About Keep America BeautifulKeep America Beautiful, the nation’s leading community improvement nonprofit organization, inspires and educates people to take action every day to improve and beautify their community environment. Established in 1953, Keep America Beautiful strives to End Littering, Improve Recycling, and Beautify America’s Communities. We believe everyone has a right to live in a clean, green, and beautiful community, and shares a responsibility to contribute to that vision. The organization is driven by the work and passion of more than 650 Keep America Beautiful affiliates, millions of volunteers, and the collaborative support of corporate partners, social and civic service organizations, academia, municipalities, elected officials, and individuals. Join us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Donate and take action at kab.org.
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