Smoke-Free Campus Initiative: Sustainability Initiative

Our sustainability initiative addresses the problem on campus of the littered cigarette butts outside many of the buildings. Starting this year, Plymouth State is a smoke free campus, so we no longer have cigarette disposal bins. We plan to install clear disposal bins for cigarette butts to physically show people how much they are smoking and to make our campus a cleaner place. The goal of this initiative is not to support smoking on campus, but instead aid in the existing problem of the non biodegradable cigarette filters that litter our campus, while still educating those on the damages smoking can cause. This will create a more sustainable community because of the cleaner and more welcoming environment the campus with no unsightly cigarette litter. …show more content…
To try and combat this along with improve the health of students, Healthy PSU brought the Smoke and Tobacco Free Campus Initiative into effect in August of this year. This meant that smoking is now banned on campus, and new signs were put up displaying this information.While this program sprung up so quickly, there are also some contradictions within the program. Many signs across campus currently state that PSU is a smoke free campus; but others, most likely where previous smoking areas were located, still say designated smoking area. These contradictory signs are confusing, especially because the tobacco free campus is not enforced, leaving signs to be interpreted differently by each person. In addition to this because the existing policy is not enforced by anyone on campus, making every sign stating PSU is a smoke free campus lose its