| Education Lottery Wants to Turn Litter Into Money |
| Losing scratch tickets often become
cast-off litter. So the state lottery is turning those tickets into
potential cash with the clean sweep second chance
drawings. Here's how it works. When you get 5 non-winning scratch-off tickets, you fill in all your name and address information on the back and mail 5 in one envelope to the lottery. The lottery will have one drawing each month for a year, where 100 people will win $50 each." The lottery had a similar second chance drawing to win a Harley Davidson motorcycle and several tickets came in. Clean sweep will give away a total of 60,000 dollars. But the lottery's director says that will come from money set aside for prizes. Ernie Passailaigue says, "what we have is a prize component of everything we do, and that's factored in." When state lawmakers wrote the lottery law they required these second chance drawings specifically to cut down on litter. Passailaigue says there are employees who process all the mail and security oversees the drawings. So this is a built-in part of their operation that doesn't take employees away from what they usually do. Those drawings start at the end of July and will be held on the last Wednesday of each month of a year. The lottery is teaming up with Palmetto Pride, the state's anti-litter campaign for this program. This isn't the first time the lottery has held a second chance drawing for losing scratch-off tickets. One was called "grilling up summer fun" and that was last year. If you mailed in five dollars worth of scratch off tickets you could win a Ford Explorer. There's another one going on now where you can win a trip to the Caribbean. And another is giving a trip to Las Vegas. It's all part of the requirement in the law to fight litter. |