The owner of the Spartan Grill considers his cleanup effort a failure but says he is working on a solution. Mike Roylos, owner of the Spartan Grill, financed a two-day butt pickup earlier this month, offering 5 cents a butt during a two-day social experiment. He came up with the No Butts Now! campaign after months of frustration over the proliferation of butts in downtown Portland despite a ban on smoking in public parks and within 20 feet of doorways and a $100 fine for tossing butts on the street. About 30 young people participated, collecting 26,000 butts on May 1 and 2. Roylos said even though he could only pay for $320 worth of butts, participants didn't complain. "They were cool and said they wanted to do it again," said Roylos. Within days of the pickup, Monument Square was once again littered with butts. Roylos said while his one-man crusade raised awareness about the butt problem to some extent, he considers his social experiment a failure. Roylos said any permanent solution to the butt problem will require stopping a never-ending cycle. "We have put a lot of thought in trying to figure out a better way," said Roylos. Meanwhile, Roylos is doing research on the 26,000 butts that were collected, enough to fill an 18-square-inch box, before sending them off to TerraCycle, a Trenton, N.J., company that converts butts into plastic pellets. He won't reveal the nature of the research because it is part of his new idea for ridding public places of cigarette butts. "It is going to be pretty neat. This little town is going to be on the forefront of something," said Roylos.