Using a 30 in Thirty Green Grant to Stub Out Butts!

Each year, we’re able to give out a ton of Green Grants to groups and organizations across the Commonwealth for projects that align with our mission to keep Virginia beautiful. Since 2011, we’ve awarded over $203,000 for 260 projects. The Green Grant for the Town of Kilmarnock was one such award.

We’ll let them explain why they applied:

“The park opened in 2017 and we have been struggling with cigarette litter. Our Mayor and staff go to the park every day and within one week we have gathered 100’s of cigarette butts people have tossed in the park! Most of the litter is found in the grass off the sidewalks and even with designated smoking areas, people still are not placing their litter where it belongs. They are tossing it near children’s areas, vendor lots, and walking paths. 

This grant would allow our park staff to place more ash receptacles at our high traffic transition points with the phrase ” Park your butts here.” We think the slogan fits very nice with our park and will hopefully grab the attention of these guilty offenders. We also would be able to place informational signs on these receptacles and better educate people what they are doing to our park.”

This sounded like a worthy project, so we awarded them a Green Grant to get started:

“This project has been amazing! The results are great! We went from 100’s of nasty cigarette butts to NONE on the ground around the children’s areas in the matter of 9 weeks!  It has been such an amazing project for the park that we have had talks about introducing it to the Town and adding the signs and more urns to the sidewalks on our streets. The children’s areas are cleaner and parents have complimented on the no smoking signs and how happy they are to see no butts on the grounds where their children play. We added 3 no smoking signs around the Splash Pad as well as 2 informational signs when entering the children’s areas. As well as signs attached to the urns. Mr. Don’t Be A Butt has been very well received in our community and the project has been a huge success! It will continue at the park for years to come as well as hopes of moving it to other areas of the community.”

This is what we can do with the help of folks like you.