Smokers will have more spots to park their butts this summer at the Oceanfront.
The nonprofit Clean Virginia Waterways last year provided five cigarette receptacles for the boardwalk, and this year the group added another five. All 10 were placed at the Oceanfront this week (the original five were removed from the boardwalk over the winter).
Keep America Beautiful, another nonprofit, provided a $10,000 grant this year for the holders, pocket ashtrays and educational pamphlets. The cost of the receptacles range from $122 for wall-mounted holders to $345 for steel-plated free standing ones. They are managed by Clean Virginia Waterways per the terms of a city contract.
Hotels participate in the project by helping to distribute thousands of pocket ashtrays and pamphlets, said Christina Trapani of Clean Virginia Waterways. She hopes to gather more partners in the coming weeks.
Resort Advisory Commissioner Mike Eason helped Trapani draft an agreement with the City Council to place the receptacles on the boardwalk. They are between 14th and 24th streets.
“I think it should be all along the Oceanfront, personally,” Joe DaBiero, a member of the Resort Advisory Commission, said at a meeting Thursday.
DaBiero, who is also president of the Virginia Beach Hotel Association, suggested the restaurants and hotels that fund a can also be responsible for their upkeep. Commissioner Sam Reid suggested putting the names of the hotel or restaurant sponsors on the receptacles to encourage donations.
DaBiero said later by phone that he will try to get more hotels to fund more cans.
“Three hundred fifty dollars seems like a minimal amount of money to spend on these things,” he said. “I’m going to try and push this further through the hotels and see if I can’t get some action to jump behind this.”
The boardwalk’s original five cigarette cans from Clean Virginia Waterways collected 8,000 butts last year. Many more were flung and snuffed out elsewhere: Volunteers from the Virginia Beach Chapter of Surfrider Foundation and the Navy removed more than 13,000 butts from the beach last year during seven beach scans.
“I just want to make it aware to hotels that this program worked really well last year, and how much it helped in cleaning up the beach area,” DaBiero said. “It should be shared responsibility with everyone to keep our beaches clean.”
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