Boston’s 'Vote With Your Butt' Program Tries Different Public Engagement Tactic

Boston City Hall Tupungato / Shutterstock.com

By Bill Lucia,
Executive Editor

Connecting state and local government leaders

By Bill Lucia

| February 15, 2016

The city’s “Clean Streets,” initiative is modeled after a similar one in the United Kingdom.

To help curb the amount of litter on the city’s streets, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh launched an initiative last week that features interactive cigarette butt receptacles.

Printed on the box-shaped receptacles are questions, which prompt people to vote by discarding their spent smokes into one of two cigarette-sized holes. According to the mayor’s office, a box might have a question like: “More essential Boston winter gear? Hats or boots?”

The front of the receptacles is constructed with clear material so smokers and passersby can see how people have been voting.

“This smart and innovative effort incorporates a public polling process to engage our residents and visitors in protecting our environment,” Walsh said in a statement last Wednesday.

Dubbed “Neat Streets,” the program involving the cigarette butt receptacles is modeled after a similar initiative in London, which also attempts to use interactive techniques to reduce litter.

In addition to “ vote with your butt ” receptacles, the initiative in Britain has included campaigns with trash cans that make sounds when items are dropped into them, and sign-boards that encourage people to stick their chewed gum onto marked spots. The stuck pieces of gum eventually form a pattern that outlines an image—such as the cost figure for removing chewed gum from city streets each year.

In Boston, Walsh’s office says the city intends to get cigarette butt receptacles installed by the end of February and that they’ll be located in areas with high foot traffic. The city has also encouraged people to submit questions they’d like to see on the boxes, by tweeting at the @CityOfBoston Twitter handle, or under the hashtags #NeatStreets or #NeatStreetsBos.

Bill Lucia is a Reporter for Government Executive's Route Fifty. (Photo by Tupungato / Shutterstock.com)

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