Conrad Kubiak, an environmentally-conscious smoker, hates the sight of cigarette butts littering sidewalks, parking lots and roadways. "It makes me sick," he said. So now the well-known drum vendor, a regular at Musikfest and Christkindlmarkt in Bethlehem, is taking matters into his own hands. The merchant is collecting cigarette butts in sand-filled buckets this year at the popular holiday market so that they can be recycledinto plastic lumber, shipping pallets, lawn furniture and ash trays. Kubiak has placed four buckets in the outdoor smoking areas of Christkindlmarkt with a sign that says, "Make your butt useful." Smokers have responded and the buckets were brimming with butts last week. Kubiak will send the butts he collects to TerraCycle, a Trenton, N.J., company that specializes in finding ways to recycle items that previously were only sent to landfills. It launched the cigarette recycling initiative in the United States last month, company spokeswoman Lauren Taylor said.