Autumn in the North Cemetery.

Sixty miles west of Boston, Massachusetts there is the small New England town of Sturbridge. Located at the junction of I-90 (The Mass Pike), and I-84 it has become known as the "Crossroads of New England". The town was first settled over 300 years ago, and like other small New England towns it has grown just enough over the years to be in a difficult place today. How do we embrace the future without forgetting how we got to our present? How do we attract the right kind of growth, and maintain who we are? And, what about our culture out here in Central Massachusetts?



These pages will cause one to think about how to protect what we have, our future direction, and how to move on in the very best way.


Those thoughts, and other ramblings, will hopefully inspire more thought, conversation, action, and occasionally a smile...

...seems to be working so far

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Creative Ways To Combat Litter

Litter has increased in recent years all over the Commonwealth. This is the first in a series of posts regarding litter, and the imaginative ways to combat it.




A litter idea: Turn losers into possible winners

Denise Jewell CNHI News Service

Tue, May 13 2008— Massachusetts has come up with a clever way to discourage lottery ticket litter and encourage frequent sales at the same time. You simply turn in five losers for a potential winner.The idea, lottery officials said, is to prevent the millions of discarded scratch-off tickets from ending up as debris about the thousands of neighborhood and other lottery outlets.And, in Massachusetts, scratch tickets are a huge business. They provide 70 percent of the $4.5 billion the state receives annually from lottery sales.Losing tickets are redeemed at fairs and other events around the state, then taken to a recycling center for shredding and conversion to paper pulp.Beth Bresnahan, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Lottery, said the program is 2 years old and thus far has collected 100 tons of losers.Most states hold second chance drawings as a way to collect used tickets, a technique abandoned by Massachusetts in favor of the five-for-one approach.Lottery agents said the redemption program keeps their premises clean. Some players, they said, even rummage through trash barrels in quest of critical mass.To make it worth the effort, the agents said, most regular lottery players try to accumulate 25 pounds of tickets. That weight is worth about $300 in potential winning tickets."It's helpful to keep the place looking nice," said Tony Amico, co-owner of Ted's Stateline Mobil in Methuen, Mass., the state's top scratch ticket agent.Denise Jewell is a CNHI News Service Elite Reporting Program fellow. She writes for the Niagara Gazette in Niagara Falls, N.Y.
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.
The above article is from the Salem News Online May 13, 2008
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousThursday, May 15, 2008

    This is for real. My brother took advantage of it. He had, literally, a few thousand lottery tickets in his car, his house, his truck, his desk. He bagged them all and trekked out to the cash-in place, and got money for them.

    Only problem is, he spent the cash on more lottery tickets!

    Keep smilin'

    ReplyDelete



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