New Orleans sells the cigarette butts to a company called TerraCycle, based in Trenton, New Jersey at $4 a pound. The company then goes to work processing the butts into useful things. The organic parts of the butts, the paper and tobacco, are turned into compost. The tobacco is not used to make more cigarettes.

Next week the students and teachers at Flanders Elementary School will unveil their new playground made from recycled oral care products after winning the TerraCycle® Recycled Playground Challenge. A ribbon cutting ceremony is planned at the Victoria Drive school at 10 a.m. Oct. 21. Flanders Elementary earned the highest total number of Playground Credits in the TerraCycle® Recycled Playground Challenge to become the grand prize winner of a playground made from toothpaste tubes, toothbrushes and floss containers.

At TerraCycle, I find myself in the center of this argument all the time. While we do work with major brands and manufacturers to create more circular solutions for their pre- and post-consumer packaging waste, I also view myself as an environmentalist. As an environmentalist, I believe that we should be seeking to maximize the recyclability of all packaging formats.

Hutchinson Middle School is one of the top collectors in the contest, hosted by TerraCycle ® and Capri Sun ®, and they are nearing the final level to win a new playground made from recycled drink pouches. The school has already collected 97,378 units with the hopes of being the first one to reach the 200,000 mark to be awarded the playground. The Capri Sun Milestone Program has five levels, rewarding collectors for reaching cumulative achievements in their collection, from 10,000 pouches to 200,000 pouches.

To reduce some of this waste, my company, TerraCycle, has a variety of recycling programs for commonly difficult-to-recycle performance snack packages. Fitness enthusiasts can now recycle their GU Energy Labs product packaging, Clif Bar and LARABAR wrappers, and Bear Naked granola pouches through our free recycling platforms.

Cedar Ridge Elementary School is in the lead in a contest to win a recycled playground. The Grovetown school is one of the top collectors in the Capri Sun Milestone Contest, put on by TerraCycle and Capri Sun. Students have collected and recycled 149,351 Capri Sun drink pouches from the lunchroom and home. The first school to collect 200,000 pouches will be awarded a new playground made from recycled drink pouches.

TerraCycle is part of New Zealand’s disruptive circular economy and it’s taken charge of recycling the waste that other agencies deem unsavoury or difficult to recycle or that can’t be disposed of through local council municipal bins.

The Capri Sun Milestone Program is an extension of The Drink Pouch Brigade, a free national recycling program sponsored by TerraCycle and Capri Sun. Since 2007, thousands of Drink Pouch Brigade participants have kept almost 235 million drink pouches out of landfills and raised more than $4.5 million for charity. One of the fastest-growing green companies in the world, TerraCycle is an upcycling and recycling company that collects difficult-to-recycle packaging and products and repurposes the material into affordable, innovative products.

This time we had an exhilarating conversation with Tom Szaky, CEO and founder of TerraCycle, an international leader in the collection and repurposing of hard-to-recycle post-consumer waste, from used chip bags to cigarette butts. Though he’s very passionate about garbage, his main interest lies in ways to reduce waste to almost zero. For him smart and circular cities cannot exist without changing the behavior of consumers.

Recycling in the United States is an economically unsustainable trend — or at least that’s what New York Times writer John Tierney recently argued in his opinion piece, “The Reign of Recycling," published in the October 4^th Sunday Review. Tierney’s arguments focus almost entirely on the inefficiency and economic viability of recycling, suggesting that CPG companies and major brands, municipalities, and even consumers should stop worrying about recycling, and that linear disposal methods are successful enough for the sake of cost-effectiveness and profitability. I believe that this is a dangerous conclusion to make in the 21^st century, a time where the need for long-term sustainability strategies and circular waste solutions are more apparent than ever.