TERRACYCLE NEWS

ELIMINATING THE IDEA OF WASTE®

Cutting a Deal With Big Tobacco

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Last May, I wrote a post about whether a green company, like TerraCycle, should partner with companies that make tobacco, firearms or alcohol. Our business relies on taking waste that has traditionally been considered nonrecyclable and finding ways to recycle it. We do this by running national collection and solution programs for specific types of waste, and we have been partnering with the alcohol industry for a few years now. Our alcohol industry partnerships began with a national wine-cork program that has collected roughly two million corks and recycled them into products such as cork boards, shoes and flooring. This program is financed by a major synthetic cork company, Nomacorc, and will expand into Italy later this year. We also recently began a program to collect wine pouches with the Clif Family Winery. While we have not yet partnered with anyone in the firearms industry — I’m hoping we will collect shotgun shells at some point — we have been attempting to work with the tobacco industry for some time. And I am happy to say that we recently signed our first and second tobacco deals (both programs will start in a few weeks). One is with Canada’s largest tobacco company, the other with one of America’s largest tobacco companies. Both programs will allow TerraCycle to collect and recycle cigarette butts and other cigarette-related waste.