TERRACYCLE NEWS

ELIMINATING THE IDEA OF WASTE®

RECYCLE: Company turns cigarette butts, other trash into products

TerraCycle Cigarette Waste Brigade Include USA Solo cups Sante Fe Natural Tobacco Co.
If you feel guilty when you throw away a butter tub, deodorant tube or other trash, check out some of the recycling programs from the Trenton, N.J.-based company TerraCycle.cigarette_butts The company has 40 programs for collecting and recycling everything from candy wrappers and juice pouches to Solo cups and tape dispensers. The trash is turned into new products such as park benches and backpacks, some of which can be found at Target and Walmart. One of the programs, known as The Cigarette Waste Brigade, is run by TerraCycle and the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. Members of the public are asked to collect extinguished cigarettes, filters, loose tobacco pouches, outer plastic packaging, inner foil packaging, rolling paper and ash, which are turned into plastic pallets and other products. (The cardboard boxes are not accepted  since they can be recycled through municipal programs.) When it’s time to send in the waste, a free shipping label can be printed out from TerraCycle web site. The company was founded in 2001 by Tom Szaky when he was a Princeton University student. TerraCycle began producing organic fertilizer by packaging liquified “worm poop” in used soda bottles. More than 40 million people nationwide participate in the recycling programs, diverting more than 2.5 billion pieces of waste from landfills, according to a company news release.