FARMINGTON - Volunteers have been as busy as Santa’s elves at the United Way of the Tri-Valley Area this fall. During this season of thanks, it is important to recognize the impact that many generous volunteers are having in Greater Franklin County. TerraCycle Under the leadership of volunteer Sarah Martin, and UMF intern Joe Dignam, TerraCycle was launched. In this program various products – from shampoo bottles to foil-lined granola bar wrappers – are sent to TerraCycle headquarters in New Jersey where they are recycled into other products or up-cycled into functional art such as juice box tote bags. TerraCycle pays money for the products that are shipped to them (for free) so the environment benefits as well as the United Way!

Under the leadership of volunteer Sarah Martin, and UMF intern Joe Dignam, TerraCycle was launched. In this program various products – from shampoo bottles to foil-lined granola bar wrappers – are sent to TerraCycle headquarters in New Jersey where they are recycled into other products or up-cycled into functional art such as juice box tote bags. TerraCycle pays money for the products that are shipped to them (for free) so the environment benefits as well as the United Way!

Old or broken drinking glasses. Burned-out incandescent light bulbs. Empty prescription-medicine vials. These are on an increasingly shortlist of common waste items that we can't put in our residential curbside recycling bin.   They are the unrecyclables.   That sounds almost criminal, doesn't it? Recycling has become so ingrained here in the Seattle area that we now expect to be able to recycle everything. When we can't recycle something, we want to know why.   Q: How about plastic or foil candy wrappers and chip bags? A: No municipal residential-recycling programs accept these. Some Seattle-area schools and nonprofits collect candy and snack packaging through programs offered by New Jersey-based TerraCycle, a for-profit company. TerraCycle funds these recycling programs through promotional partnerships with brands such as M&M's. Recyclability isn't everything. Reducing and reusing trumps recycling. But recycling certainly beats landfilling, and if a product or packaging is only "technically" recyclable, that doesn't help consumers. We're most likely to recycle when it's as easy as throwing something away.

CityLink Beerfest 2012 to Benefit Trash to Treasure It's that time again beer fans. City Link Beer Fest and Trash to Treasure team up to raise revenue for T2T and recycle 90% of the event's waste. This is south Florida's only GREEN Beer Fest. The event is Friday, December 07, 2012 at Huizenga Plaza in Fort Lauderdale.

TerraCycle, a small upcycling company based in New Jersey, has launched its new program, Cigarette Waste Brigade, which aims to collect various wastes from cigarettes and tobaccos – cigarette butts, rolling papers, loose tobacco pouches, plastic wrapper, foil, and ashes. Cigarette butts are one of the wastes that are most of the time disposed of improperly. In fact, about 65% of cigarettes are littered by smokers and cigarette is the number one waste recovered from oceans with a total of 52 million cigarette filters in 25 years. TerraCycle, known for collecting and processing hard-to-recycle wastes to produce various consumer products, has added another item to their list. In their Cigarette Waste Brigade program, they allow cigarette smokers (strictly 19 years old and above), bar and restaurant owners, building managers, and litter clean-up groups to participate by having their cigarette wastes collected and get paid in return in terms of charitable gifts or cash. The cigarette wastes are then made into industrial plastic pallets and compost material. The program is sponsored by Santa Fe  Natural Tobacco Company, the manufacturer of Natural American Spirit brand cigarettes. This may actually sound inappropriate as they are the very producers of these goods that are neither beneficial to the people and the environment. Nevertheless, while the tobacco industry exists, their monetary efforts may also count in helping our environment.

BIC et VITTEL améliorent continuellement l’éco conception de leurs produits pour limiter le recours aux matériaux non renouvelables et réduire leur impact sur l’environnement. Les deux marques informent et sensibilisent également le grand public au geste de tri et participent à l’amélioration des filières de recyclage.

As Earth911 recently reported, cigarettes can now be recycled in the U.S. thanks to a new partnership between TerraCycle, a company that finds recycling solutions for items that aren't easy to recycle, and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. TerraCycle collects discarded cigarettes that people mail to them through their Cigarette Waste Brigade and turns the filters into industrial products such as shipping pallets and plastic lumber. This program is unique and tackles a real environmental problem, since cigarette waste can be found on most roadways and is very common at beaches. The real mystery here is how a cigarette becomes a new product like a shipping pallet. To find out, Earth911 talked with Ernie Simpson, Global VP of Research & Development for TerraCycle. How Cigarette Recycling Works To find a viable recycling solution for a huge waste stream such as cigarettes, TerraCycle had to consider processes that could handle large volumes of material. The method the company's researchers settled on can be broken down into a few main steps. "We collect the filters and sterilize them through irradiation," Simpson said. "Then we separate the tobacco from the filter and paper." To separate the parts of the cigarette, the materials are shredded. Afterward, the tobacco and paper are both composted, and TerraCycle sends the tobacco to a special composting facility that only composts tobacco products. After that, they're left with just the filters, the part of the cigarette that gets recycled into new materials. "The filter is cellulose acetate, a plastic that can be recycled with other plastic materials," Simpson explained. "We blend the cellulose acetate with other recyclable materials. Then we use those to create different items." To create the appropriate blend of plastic, TerraCycle mixes the filters with other plastic they have in house. Once mixed, the plastic is turned into pellets, which can then be molded into new products. "Creating plastic pallets for shipping made from cigarette filters is really cool," Simpson said, and it's certainly not something you see everyday. Ensuring Recycled Filters Are Safe One potential concern about this process is safety: will any contaminants make their way into the new products? "We have tested our formulations for everything from possible food contact to heavy metal contamination to nicotine contamination," Simpson explained. His team has also tested for any microbes or bacteria to ensure to products' safety. "By diluting the filters with other plastic material you dilute any other agents. The other materials have no nicotine or anything of that sort, so simply by blending [the filters and other plastic] at a certain ratio you can reduce the presence of any of those materials," Simpson said. To be on the safe side, TerraCycle never uses recycled cigarette filters in any consumer products that might come into contact with food or other consumables. All filters find their way into new industrial products. Get Involved TerraCycle hopes to collect and recycle hundreds of millions of cigarette butts through the Cigarette Waste Brigade, and the recycling process will make a significant impact when it comes to reducing waste. Creating pallets and other products out of cigarette waste instead of virgin plastic reduces both the amount of waste in landfills and the quantity of virgin materials needed to make new products. To get involved and start collecting cigarette waste, visit TerraCycle's Cigarette Waste Brigade webpage. Anyone 21 years of age or older can start collecting as an individual or part of a group. You could also find out if any anti-litter groups in your area are already collecting cigarette butts and team up with them. Setting up a collection at your workplace or a business you frequent might be another good option. Want to learn how to recycle other unusual materials? Check Out: Recycling Mystery: Toothbrushes and Toothpaste Tubes