TerraCycle takes the recyclable material and then re-purposes them into useable items. The company’s cigarette butt recycling program has been in Canada since 2012. The collected butts are recycled into plastic pellets to make industrial products like plastic shipping pallets.
Smokers are used to getting grief from the rest of society. Having been bombarded with graphic warnings about your certain death by cancer, frowned and tutted at for blowing filth-clouds at civilians, and forced out into the cold and rain, the least you can expect is to get a nicotine fix in peace. So you light up, inhale, and then with a casual flick of your finger send the filter of your cigarette arcing off into the gutter. Because, well, everyone does that, don’t they? And cig butts – they just kind of, go away, somehow… Don’t they?
TerraCycle uses these disposable urns which they put in key locations downtown where people discard their cigarette butts.
Grand Rapids city officials are hoping to cut down on cigarette butt litter with new disposal urns scattered throughout downtown. Melvin Eledge, operations manager and ambassador for Downtown Grand Rapids Inc., says the city is starting out with 17 of the urns, and 12 more are on the way. In the United States alone, 195 million pounds of cigarette butts are thrown onto the ground every year. Smokers like Marc Matthews will think twice about throwing it on the ground now that Grand Rapids has the receptacles. "I think it's a good thing. Smoking is definitely a bad habit and it's nice to see that something good can come out of it," Matthews said.
The company doing the recycling is a global company called TerraCycle which just installed sixty-
two cigarette receptacles as well.
Lansdowne Place is like a village without housing, with an infrastructure system to match. The mall is home to more than 100 retailers and fast food outlets, a department store and the city's biggest supermarket. Approximately 1,000 people clock in for work every day. It is also, and this might surprise those who equate shopping malls only with consumerism and rampant consumption, greener and more environmentally aware than most communities.
Cigarette butts are not normally given top billing in discussions about tobacco-related problems. But they should be, according to environmental experts. The USDA estimates that about 360 billion cigarettes are consumed in the U.S. each year. Close to two-thirds of those butts — 234 billion — are tossed as litter, according to a study by the environmental group Keep America Beautiful.
Taking a look at Memorial’s smoking ban a few years later. In 2013, Memorial University took a step similar to many other universities across the country to curb the menace that is smoking on campus. Armed with posters bearing catchy slogans and the removal of ashtrays, on August 1, 2013, smoking became officially banned at MUN.
National nonprofit Keep America Beautiful's 2015 Cigarette Litter Prevention Program helped to achieve a 52% reduction in cigarette litter in the participating communities, marking a 4% increase over its 2014 outcome. Moving forward, the nonprofit will award 49 grants worth a total of $240,000 to downtown associations, park and recreation areas, and organizations to address litter and implement the program in their communities this year.
