City of Newport News Awarded $1,000 Green Grant

The City of Newport News is awarded a $1,000 Green Grant for Cigarette Litter Prevention as part of our 13th Annual Green Grants Program!

The City of Newport News is located where the James River meets the Chesapeake Bay. The goal of the City of Newport News is to properly dispose of cigarette butts in their motels, so the cigarette litter does not get into their waterways.  Because all storm water drains lead to a body of water in the City of Newport News, when cigarette butts are littered on the ground, in parking lots, or tossed in bushes, the are swept away by rainwater into the storm drains, and into surrounding waterways.

The City of Newport News is home to eleven motels where the doors to the rooms face outside.  Most of the hotels have designated smoking rooms. By offering those motels wall-mounted cigarette receptacles for their smoking room, guests would be encouraged to smoke outside the hotel room and to properly dispose of their cigarette butts in the receptacles instead of littering them.

Funds provided by the Green Grant program will be used to purchase wall-mounted cigarette butt receptacles.  Participating hotel management will be asked to measure the amount of cigarette butts they have littered before and after the installation of the receptacles.  They expectation is that they will  have less cigarette butt litter on the ground, parking lots, and landscaping.

With cigarette litter being the Number One most littered item in the state, we applaud the City of Newport News for working to reduce cigarette butt litter and prevent it from traveling to our beautiful James River and Chesapeake Bay.