Some call it a filthy habit, and that's hard to argue against when your vice burns to ashes and butts. Lung dart. Coffin nail. Cancer stick. Smokers are accustomed to such clucking. So what's another dead cigarette on the street? A sweeping crew will carry it to the grave. Or not. In Oklahoma City, cigarette butts sprinkle the downtown landscape — brushed into the gutters by the wind, tossed onto a sidewalk or discreetly dropped in an alley. But there aren't as many as there used to be. Since August, more than 15,000 butts have been collected at 23 aluminum and fire-resistant cigarette waste recycling stations installed on downtown light poles. The project grew out of a partnership between the city's Office of Sustainability, and nonprofits DowntownOKC Inc. and OKC Beautiful. OKC Beautiful was among the 42 organizations receiving part of $240,000 in grant funding last year from the national Keep America Beautiful for its Cigarette Litter Prevention Program. DowntownOKC installed and maintains the receptacles, which are located throughout the Central Business District. Jerry Church, operations manager for DowntownOKC, said 40 receptacles were bought and the vision is to expand the program every other year. The aim isn't to create smoking areas and enable the habit, but to reduce litter. “People are going to smoke,” Church said. “From a city beautification perspective, if I can keep the cigarette butts out of the streets, out of the gutters, out of the stormwater drains, that's what matters.” One idea was to place the receptacles at places where smokers are likely to congregate. That meant three receptacles outside the county courthouse. Small crews empty the receptacles about once a month. Some receptacles get so full, they can cause a mild panic. A receptacle at Park Avenue near the Oklahoma Tower is one example. “If we don't stay on top of that one, someone will call and say it's smoking,” said Addison Ball, operations coordinator for DowntownOKC. On a recent Thursday morning, Ball and Church emptied the receptacles. Near Robinson and Sheridan avenues, Church braced an orange 5-gallon bucket under cigarette receptacles as Ball jammed a blue plastic tool up through the bottom to loosen wads of 100s, shorts, lights and menthols. The spit and lipstick-drenched cigarettes spilled out in abundance. “The regular smokers are using them on a regular basis,” Church said. They ship the cigarettes and packaging free-of-charge to New Jersey-based TerraCycle. The company sorts out the cigarettes by composition and melts them into hard plastic that can be remolded into industrial products. The ash and tobacco are separated and composted, according to TerraCycle's website. T.O. Bowman, the city's sustainability manager, estimates the receptacles have reduced cigarette litter by about 55 percent. The result is cleaner storm drains, improved safety for animals that may ingest the cigarette butts and streets that look a little more spiffy. “We wanted a clean downtown for visitors and users of the space,” Bowman said. “It really made a huge difference.”