Fast Facts: Cigarette butts account for about 32 percent of litter found in U.S. storm drains Butt ballot bins encourage proper disposal of cigarette butts Smokers “vote” on questions by choice of disposal bin

Park Slopers are putting your butts to work — to save the planet! Honchos of the nabe’s Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District installed special receptacles along the thoroughfare where puffing passersby can toss used cigarettes, which are then sent to a company that recycles the otherwise forgotten filth into functional goods, according to a street cleaner that works with the organization.

Park Slopers are putting your butts to work — to save the planet! Honchos of the nabe’s Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District installed special receptacles along the thoroughfare where puffing passersby can toss used cigarettes, which are then sent to a company that recycles the otherwise forgotten filth into functional goods, according to a street cleaner that works with the organization.

Recycling has become much more popular than it was decades ago, especially since most of us have become more conscientious of our limited resources. Therefore, recycling has become a staple in most people’s daily lives, making it a greater importance that businesses large and small make recycling a natural part of their daily operations.

Efforts began this year to clean up those pesky cigarette butts that line the streets of San Francisco, especially the busier commercial corridors here in the Richmond District.

If you’ve trekked around the Atlanta scene much at all, you’ve encountered cigarette smokers. And if you’ve encountered smokers, you’ve probably also seen floors and sidewalks littered with the charred butts they’ve left behind. Andrew Joyce, singer and guitarist of local surf rock gang Antarcticats, certainly did. “I feel like every venue or house I go to has tons of cig litter around,” he tells me over email. “It’s always bummed me out, since pollutants and toxins in the filters can leach out into the groundwater.” As an environmental engineering student at Georgia Tech, Joyce was keen to find a solution, and after some research and adjusted planning, he’s devised a benefit gig and recycling initiative called ButtFest to shed light on both the problem and a potential solution.

Recycling has become a major part of our daily lives with more and more companies making it a staple among their team members, even down to how they do business. We’ve seen here in Southern Nevada some of the ways places are going green like switching to light-emitting diode lights and powering offices with renewable energy. As creative as businesses and individuals can get to be more sustainable, the one aspect of sustainability that has always rang true is good-old recycling.

A few years ago, Marsha Borden favored high quality, organic skeins of wool to create things like knitted hats, mittens, and scarves for her beloved children. Then, one day, she looked at the pile of colorful plastic bags growing in the kitchen of her Guilford home. “I thought, hmmmm, what can I do with these plastic bags? I really kind of became captivated. Maybe I didn’t need to buy expensive new materials like organic cotton to make them. Could I use stuff I already had?” says Borden. Since then she has used those plastic bags to make a skirt, a bustier, handbags, Christmas ornaments, an entire tea set including a tablecloth, and several other works of art that have been shown in art gallery exhibitions next to work by artists with national and international reputations. Borden, in fact, credits her obsession with transforming these plastic bags as being key to her transformation from a mom who makes mittens to a mom who makes mittens and is also an artist and budding activist.

Want to be more mindful while you're cleaning? You've probably got a good handle on the items you can toss into your recycling bins—paper, plastics, glass, aluminum, etc.—but there are also a lot of specialty programs that allow you to recycle other household items to reduce waste and even help people in need. And if you compost (or if you're thinking about starting) it might surprise you to know that you can add more to your compost pile than just food scraps, coffee grounds and leaves.

Eight cigarette buttlers are now installed downtown, with 12 more coming, in an attempt to keep the city clean and lessen pollution runoff into the ocean. The Gloucester Clean City Commission received a $2,500 Cigarette Litter Prevention Program grant from Keep America Beautiful in March and used the money to buy 20 buttlers. Commissioners Ainsley Smith, Nick Iliades, Beverly Low and Eric Magers installing seven buttlers on Main Street themselves Wednesday evening.. "Its' a pretty easy process," Smith said. "For the most part we put them up there with simple hand tools and they're sturdy so we're feeling good about that."