A litter idea: Turn losers into possible winners

Hooked on Gambling: Second part of three-part series

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.