Mayor Walsh Announces New Plan for Cigarette Butt Disposal

Neat Streets photo courtesy of City of Boston

Mayor Marty Walsh wants to keep your butts off the street.

Walsh today announced his new “Neat Streets” initiative, a plan for encouraging proper disposal of cigarette butts. By the end of the month, waste receptacles will be installed in heavily walked areas throughout the city—because nothing ruins historic cobblestone streets like a bunch of butts.

But Neat Streets, modeled after a similar system used in London, goes beyond a few extra garbage cans. Hoping to make the plan as interactive as possible, the receptacles, made by Cambridge company danger!awesome, are each labeled with a question—like “Which superpower would you want?”—and divided into two halves, each marked with a possible response. Smokers can answer the question by dropping their trash into the corresponding slot.

Anyone interested can submit potential questions for the containers via Twitter. Just tweet at @CityofBoston and use either #NeatStreets or #NeatStreetsBos.