Dundalk Tidy Towns are urging smokers to stub out in the new sustainable cigarette butt bins launched in town last week.
The ends of cigarettes are often discarded throughout the town, and are not only a blight on the local landscape, but also could cost the town vital points in major competitions such as Tidy Towns and the Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) surveys.
Now, local volunteers came up with a plan to encourage smokers to tip their ends into designated bins. The cigarette butts are then recycled into every day things such as the frames of sunglasses, said Stephen Clarke, volunteer with Dundalk Tidy Towns.