By Kacie Goode Tuesday, August 28, 2018 at 12:48 pm Cigarette butts litter the alley by 3rd Street Tap House, feet from one of six new cigarette receptacles that have been installed in downtown Bardstown. It’s an upsetting sight for those who care about community upkeep, which is why the people responsible for the new ashtrays hope more will make an effort to use them. “There are a lot of cigarette butts at the base of them; all around them,” said Jayme Haslam, a local resident and member of the design committee for the Bardstown Main Street Program, who pushed for the receptacles. The idea for the ashtrays came to her last year. When Haslam would walk through downtown, she would often run into Judge-Executive Dean Watts, and the two would commiserate about the trash and cigarette butts plaguing the ground of Third Street. “Cigarette butts downtown and all over are just horrible,” and have been for years, Watts said, with hundreds being collected around his Court Square office alone. “There is a choice between throwing them down on the ground and putting them somewhere to be disposed of properly.” Haslam wanted to find a way to help reduce the eyesore downtown and started looking at different companies that offered ashtrays. During a visit to Grand Rapids, Mich., she saw several small cigarette disposal cans attached to posts along sidewalks. She brought the idea to Watts, who agreed his office could pay for some receptacles to help keep downtown cleaner. After having the idea approved by other downtown officials, six ashtrays were installed. While Court Square and Third Street are in the city limits and Watts oversees the county, he said locations such as the Old Courthouse Building and the Sutherland Building off Stephen Foster are county-owned properties, and “Being part of downtown is important.” The six ashtrays are connected to lampposts near areas where people congregate the most, such as restaurants and bars, and where Haslam and Watts have seen the most trash. Locations include near 3rd Street Tap House, Café Primo, Alexander Bullitt’s Brewery and BBQ, JT’s Consignments on the second block of North Third, in front of Mammy’s Kitchen and one near the Fine Arts Bardstown Society building. The canisters have been up for about a month, Haslam said, but they are not being used as much as she would like to see and she hopes that will change. In addition to offering a place to dispose of cigarettes, Haslam is also working with a company called TerraCycle that allows her to send in the waste from the ashtrays to be recycled into compost and other materials. There is also a “doggie waste” bag dispenser that has been installed near the FABS building to encourage owners to clean up after their pets, which has been another problem affecting downtown upkeep.