Richelle H. Concio Mar 08, 2019 08:08 AM EST     According to recent findings, textile waste takes up a big chunk of the garbage hauled to landfills. In 2015, over 10 million tons of these garbage were textile items. This includes carpets, footwear, discarded clothing, sheets, and towels. Unfortunately, only 14.2% of the clothing and shoes have been recycled during the said year.  The textile items that were not recycled would sit in the landfills for over 200 years.   Fast Company, an American business magazine, brought up this issue for public awareness. In their report, New York alone is responsible for 200 million pounds of clothing being thrown in the trash every year. With this issue at hand, the New York City Department of Sanitation, together with other foundations, organizations, and several fashion companies initiated a drive in the city. New Yorkers were called out to dispose of their old clothing by using any of the 1,000 designated drop-off points in the city. Some retailers would even give out $20 vouchers in exchange for old unwearable pants.   TerraCycle accepts old clothing that was mailed in. Boxes for shipping out discarded clothing are available on their website. The company has also partnered up with Bausch in this venture, accepting old contact lenses which will be melted into plastic and in turn, made into other products.   Another method of disposing of old clothing is by donating the usable ones to different charity or thrift stores. These stores often accept clothes that they can still sell. However, if the clothes are no longer sellable, the clothes are either thrown out or sent out for recycling.   The sad reality remains that old clothing cannot be recycled back into the same clothing. However, it could be down-cycled into other products such as rags, handicrafts, or insulation. Down-cycling is the process of using old items to make a new product. For textile, this is the choice to take when the items are no longer usable as it is.   All these efforts work toward cutting back on the garbage that humankind has been producing through the years. As textile waste bears a heavyweight when it comes to tallying garbage materials, it is crucial to lowering the number of textile items being sent to landfills. Textile fibers may release methane and carbon dioxide gas as it sits in the landfills for hundreds of years. While this is true for natural fibers, synthetic fibers will not decompose and release toxic substances instead. With this in mind, the proper disposal of unwanted old clothing is one way to help save the environment.

Loop is changing the way we approach packaging through a zero-waste delivery and retail modelANDREW SEAMAN / UNSPLASH Ease, affordability, and convenience: these concepts that have quickly come to the forefront of the way that we operate and prioritize. Yet these priorities have come at odds with our growing environmental crisis, where individuals are starting to get curious about what they can do to lighten their environmental impact. Many struggle to balance a sustainable lifestyle with the prevalence and ease of a culture reliant on disposable products. Enter Loop, a new initiative pioneered by TerraCycle and a coalition of over a dozen brands including Unilever, P&G, PepsiCo, Nestle, People Against Dirty, Burlap & Barrel Single Origin Spices, and more, setting out to bring ease, affordability, and convenience to zero waste consumable goods. Loop combines innovation, sustainability, and convenience, allowing consumers to easily integrate zero waste into their purchasing decisions . By shifting the onus of the packaging to the manufacturers, the customers are able to get better products for the same price, plus a deposit, with essentially no waste. The implications are vast, and the program allows brands to innovate on both product and environmental solutions at the same time. For example, Unilever created minim, a reusable deodorant line that features Axe, Dove, and Rexona (called Sure in the UK and Degree in the US), for Loop. These three products currently reach over 1 billion people per year, and minim’s reusable container can be refilled up to 100 times. In addition to reducing waste, innovative packaging also leads to improved user experience. “The beautifully crafted design is minimal, compact and sustainable, offering a new consumer experience without any unnecessary materials,” shared Augusto Garzon, Global Brand Director, Deodorants at Unilever. Having already committed to ensuring their plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025, Loop is helping push Unilever forward in their sustainability goals. “We believe Loop will complement our existing efforts to create a plastic system that works and a packaging system that is truly circular by design,” commented David Blanchard, Unilever’s Chief R&D Officer. Loop’s goal is to make the circular economy and zero waste packaging accessible, and to that end, they are committed to working with manufacturers of all sizes. “We are partnering aggressively with every manufacturer, big and small,” emphasized Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle. “At the beginning, we are prioritizing [the] biggest [companies] first, since they are the biggest part of the challenge, and their scale is so large,” he commented, while also welcoming companies of any size in taking part. While the product selection may seem limited at first, the products featured are some of the most highly consumed products in the country, such as Tropicana orange juice and Haagen-Dazs ice cream. Shifting to reusable packing for those products can make a big splash in keeping packaging out of the landfill as well as the recycling stream. The leap for consumers to try out the program,Szaky contended, should not be a heavy load. “It’s already the world’s best products and the world’s best retailers, so it’s not a big leap of faith,” he explained. “The cheaper, easier, and more convenient we make it, the more people will adopt it.” The user experience is simple: products can be ordered online and shipped to the customer’s home in a reusable bag. When the customer is finished with the product, they put it back in the bag, and UPS, Loop’s logistical partner, picks it up and brings it back to be cleaned and refilled. Customers can either get their deposit returned or get the product refilled. Loop will also be rolling out the option to purchase and return to major retailers. The slight inconvenience of needing to return the bottle will also be offset by the innovation and design of the reusable packaging, Szaky purported. Loop allows companies to shift their focus from low-quality materials to durable and user experience-forward packaging. This enables companies to include “features that never could have existed before,” according to Szaky, such as an ice cream container that keeps your ice cream frozen for several hours, all at little to no extra cost for the customer (except for a deposit). Typically the consumer pays for the entire cost of a disposable package, whereas with Loop, the cost of the more expensive, reusable package, plus cleaning, will be averaged over the estimated lifespan of the container. Szakyhopes that the innovating packaging, as well as options to get refills upon return when ordering online, will incentivize consumers to partake in the program. Loop comes at a time where the zero waste movement is not just trendy, but necessary. “Addressing CO2 emissions from plastics is crucial for a successful transition to a low-carbon economy. But after 40 years of efforts to improve recycling, just 14% of plastic is collected for recycling today. It is clear that we cannot simply recycle our way to a plastic waste-free future," shared Sander Defruyt, Lead of the New Plastics Economy initiative at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. A new model is necessary as it becomes more readily apparent that recycling is not the best solution to our environmental crisis. “We need to eliminate the plastic we don’t need, and innovate so what we do need is circulated safely. New approaches that recognize the vital role of reuse and avoid the need for single-use plastic, like Loop, are a vital step in the shift to a circular economy,” cautionedDefruyt. Loop is launching New York and Paris this year. While specialty package free grocery stores, such as Nada and Precycle, as well as zero waste delivery service The Wally Shop, are popping up across the country for consumers already focused on reducing waste, Loop is complementing their work on a massive scale, working with some of the biggest companies in the world to tackle the problem head-on. “The future of consumption is that waste should not exist,” Szaky declared. The feels like a big step in that direct Loop is changing the way we approach packaging through a zero-waste delivery and retail modelANDREW SEAMAN / UNSPLASH Ease, affordability, and convenience: these concepts that have quickly come to the forefront of the way that we operate and prioritize. Yet these priorities have come at odds with our growing environmental crisis, where individuals are starting to get curious about what they can do to lighten their environmental impact. Many struggle to balance a sustainable lifestyle with the prevalence and ease of a culture reliant on disposable products. Enter Loop, a new initiative pioneered by TerraCycle and a coalition of over a dozen brands including Unilever, P&G, PepsiCo, Nestle, People Against Dirty, Burlap & Barrel Single Origin Spices, and more, setting out to bring ease, affordability, and convenience to zero waste consumable goods. Loop combines innovation, sustainability, and convenience, allowing consumers to easily integrate zero waste into their purchasing decisions . By shifting the onus of the packaging to the manufacturers, the customers are able to get better products for the same price, plus a deposit, with essentially no waste. The implications are vast, and the program allows brands to innovate on both product and environmental solutions at the same time. For example, Unilever created minim, a reusable deodorant line that features Axe, Dove, and Rexona (called Sure in the UK and Degree in the US), for Loop. These three products currently reach over 1 billion people per year, and minim’s reusable container can be refilled up to 100 times. In addition to reducing waste, innovative packaging also leads to improved user experience. “The beautifully crafted design is minimal, compact and sustainable, offering a new consumer experience without any unnecessary materials,” shared Augusto Garzon, Global Brand Director, Deodorants at Unilever. Having already committed to ensuring their plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025, Loop is helping push Unilever forward in their sustainability goals. “We believe Loop will complement our existing efforts to create a plastic system that works and a packaging system that is truly circular by design,” commented David Blanchard, Unilever’s Chief R&D Officer. Loop’s goal is to make the circular economy and zero waste packaging accessible, and to that end, they are committed to working with manufacturers of all sizes. “We are partnering aggressively with every manufacturer, big and small,” emphasized Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle. “At the beginning, we are prioritizing [the] biggest [companies] first, since they are the biggest part of the challenge, and their scale is so large,” he commented, while also welcoming companies of any size in taking part. While the product selection may seem limited at first, the products featured are some of the most highly consumed products in the country, such as Tropicana orange juice and Haagen-Dazs ice cream. Shifting to reusable packing for those products can make a big splash in keeping packaging out of the landfill as well as the recycling stream. The leap for consumers to try out the program,Szaky contended, should not be a heavy load. “It’s already the world’s best products and the world’s best retailers, so it’s not a big leap of faith,” he explained. “The cheaper, easier, and more convenient we make it, the more people will adopt it.” The user experience is simple: products can be ordered online and shipped to the customer’s home in a reusable bag. When the customer is finished with the product, they put it back in the bag, and UPS, Loop’s logistical partner, picks it up and brings it back to be cleaned and refilled. Customers can either get their deposit returned or get the product refilled. Loop will also be rolling out the option to purchase and return to major retailers. The slight inconvenience of needing to return the bottle will also be offset by the innovation and design of the reusable packaging, Szaky purported. Loop allows companies to shift their focus from low-quality materials to durable and user experience-forward packaging. This enables companies to include “features that never could have existed before,” according to Szaky, such as an ice cream container that keeps your ice cream frozen for several hours, all at little to no extra cost for the customer (except for a deposit). Typically the consumer pays for the entire cost of a disposable package, whereas with Loop, the cost of the more expensive, reusable package, plus cleaning, will be averaged over the estimated lifespan of the container. Szakyhopes that the innovating packaging, as well as options to get refills upon return when ordering online, will incentivize consumers to partake in the program. Loop comes at a time where the zero waste movement is not just trendy, but necessary. “Addressing CO2 emissions from plastics is crucial for a successful transition to a low-carbon economy. But after 40 years of efforts to improve recycling, just 14% of plastic is collected for recycling today. It is clear that we cannot simply recycle our way to a plastic waste-free future," shared Sander Defruyt, Lead of the New Plastics Economy initiative at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. A new model is necessary as it becomes more readily apparent that recycling is not the best solution to our environmental crisis. “We need to eliminate the plastic we don’t need, and innovate so what we do need is circulated safely. New approaches that recognize the vital role of reuse and avoid the need for single-use plastic, like Loop, are a vital step in the shift to a circular economy,” cautionedDefruyt. Loop is launching New York and Paris this year. While specialty package free grocery stores, such as Nada and Precycle, as well as zero waste delivery service The Wally Shop, are popping up across the country for consumers already focused on reducing waste, Loop is complementing their work on a massive scale, working with some of the biggest companies in the world to tackle the problem head-on. “The future of consumption is that waste should not exist,” Szaky declared. The feels like a big step in that direction.

据报道，整个测试活动的幕后功臣是一家名为泰瑞环保（TerraCycle）的环保回收公司。测试过程中，消费者体验完毕的空容器将全部由塔拉负责处理，包括空容器的运输、退货、清洁和重新填装。塔拉公司的主业是为企业运作可回收项目，它同时也从事资源再生业务，其最知名的项目，是将香烟过滤嘴和薯片外装等，加工改造成烟灰缸和书包。

Pigeon Brands' Elyse Boulet discusses how major players are applying innovative solutions to the packaging conundrum.

In recent months, many large brands have thrown their hats (made of recycled materials of course) into the sustainability ring, pledging to eliminate plastics, such as straws and bags, or to divert food from landfills. Last week, Wendy’s joined the long queue of global companies announcing their commitment to advancing sustainable packaging solutions, identifying new and existing cup solutions to optimize the hot and cold fiber cup.   Espousing sustainable practices has the potential to pay off. Seventy-one percent of Canadians are placing a higher importance on sustainable food packaging than they did five years ago, according to a 2018 survey by paper giant Asia Pulp and Paper. The study also found that 37% of respondents “would be open to paying up to 10% more” for products with sustainable packaging.   The trend has many companies and their marketers eyeing sustainable packaging as the next frontier in CSR, but their efforts have been met with significant challenges, says Elyse Boulet, SVP and national managing director of Pigeon Brands. “It’s not that brands don’t want to go there,” she says. “It’s that the barriers are very high.” For one thing, brands face regulatory hurdles. Boulet notes that the infrastructure for recycling biodegradable or recyclable materials differs by jurisdiction, often at the municipal level. There are also food safety concerns, especially with new and innovative materials. And some brands have eschewed recycled plastic, because the colours available with alternative materials are limited. It’s that line of thinking that made Tide go from plastic to carton. Launched in November 2018, the Tide “eco-box” contains a sealed bag of Tide liquid detergent and is made with 60% less plastic and 30% less water than the brand’s current press-tap container. The design has the added benefit of being light-weight and free of secondary re-boxing materials, thanks its  carton shape. It will take time for the industry to overcome packaging challenges, and brands will need to avoid “greenwashing” when doing so, Boulet says, emphasizing that sustainability “storytelling needs to be authentic and credible.” But she adds that there’s an opportunity for brands to differentiate themselves in the packaging milieu by “being original in their sustainable thinking.” For example, Pigeon helped Danone reduce Oikos yogurt’s over-wrap packaging, while maintaining efficiency, and “forcing ourselves to look at the available space on the shelf.” The design simultaneously increased shopability and shelf impact by turning the containers’ top panels into the messaging platform.  “It’s less costly to produce the packaging as a result,” says Boulet. Mexican beer giant Corona recently worked on replacing the plastic ring used to haul around a six-pack in favour of a biodegradable fiber eco-pack (which is currently being tested in Mexico, see featured image above). Of all the companies making strides, Boulet believes Canada’s TerraCycle is at the forefront of the packaging revolution. The company’s business model is predicated upon re-purposing traditionally non-recyclable waste products. P&G’s Head & Shoulders brand partnered on a program with TerraCycle to pick up plastic on beaches, and created packaging based on that waste, the world’s first recyclable shampoo bottle. Earlier this year, TerraCycle unveiled Loop, a subscription-based reusable packaging program geared towards the CPG industry. Many of the largest CPG companies, from PepsiCo to Unilever, have already signed on for when the program launches in Canada later this year or early next. And TerraCycle recently inked a deal with Tide, a strategic partnership that will allow the new Tide Eco-Box packaging to be 100% recyclable from bag to box.   Photo credits (via Pigeon Brands): Corona, courtesy of Parley for the Oceans; Tide,  courtesy of Yahoo Finance; Oikos, courtesy of Pigeon Brands. 

If you’re like most people who recycle, you’re probably doing a great job sorting and recycling common items like aluminum cans, plastic and glass bottles, paper and cardboard. Any recycling effort is fantastic because it helps save energy, natural resources and reduces the amount of waste piling up in landfills.   What many people don’t realize is there are a lot of items beyond the basics that can be recycled to increase your eco-conscious effort and reduce waste even more. Check out this list of 10 surprising items you might have in your home right now that you didn’t know were recyclable.   Greeting Cards   Giving and receiving cards on special occasions is a great way to show people you care. However, once opened and read, many people throw them away.   A great alternative for used (and also new) greeting cards is to send them to St. Jude’s Ranch for Children. Cards are accepted all year long and they are recycled to make new cards as part of their program to help teens learn life and work skills.   Monies raised from new cards sold by the Nevada-based organization helps their effort in providing “a safe, nurturing home with therapeutic residential treatment services to thousands of abused and neglected children in Nevada.”   Laptops   Laptops are constantly being upgraded to newer models sporting faster processors, bigger hard drives and better displays. Many people don’t even consider recycling their old laptop when buying the newest product on the market.   Per the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), recycling one million laptops saves the equivalent amount of electricity used by 3,500 U.S. households each year. Find a list of e-cycling centers in your state here.   Used Keys   If you change locks or install a digital keypad lock, you’re left with unwanted keys. Instead of tossing them out or shoving them in a drawer, you can send them to Key For Hope, a Massachusetts-based company which recycles old keys to feed the hungry.   Juice Pouches   Kids of all ages love slurping down juice pouches. The popular drink bags are not recyclable, however, due to the blended materials they are made from.   Fortunately, TerraCycle, which has become a world leader in recycling hard-to-recycle items will donate 2 cents for each Capri Sun, Honest Kids, and Kool Aid brand pouch received and one cent for all other brands. The company transforms collected pouches into purses, pencil cases, and other items sold at Walgreens and Target.   Apple Devices   If you have used or outdated Apple devices, like an iPhone, iPad and more, the company will take some of them in as credit toward a new device. Or, if a certain product is not eligible for trade-in, the company will recycle used devices for free. Check out Apple Give Back program details here.   Hearing Aids   Giving the gift of hearing to someone is a priceless gesture. The Starkey Hearing Foundation accepts used hearing aids of all makes, models and ages and recycles them for those in need. Donations are tax deductible.   Prescription Drugs   Many people don’t realize how harmful flushing or throwing away old prescription medicine can be. Pharmaceutical waste can potentially can environmental issues if leaked into landfills. The U.S. Department of Justice Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) hosts a National Prescription Drug Take Back Day each year to provide a means of proper prescription disposal. The event occurs on April 27 in 2019. Check the site on April 1 to get a list of local drug collection locations near you.   Cosmetics Cases   Popular cosmetics brands have recycling programs for empty makeup tubes, compacts and containers. For instance, Lush offers a free Fresh Face Mask if you bring five clean black LUSH pots into a local store. Other companies like Kiehl’s and MAC offer similar recycle and reward programs.   Wine Corks   The next time you pop a cork out of a wine bottle, send it to ReCORK for creative repurposing. ReCORKis proudly North America’s largest natural wine cork recycling program. The company uses recycled cork to make eco-friendly products, including soles for multiple styles of shoes. To date, the company has collected 91 million corks across the country. Find a local cork collection center here.   Mattresses   It’s rather shocking that 50,000 mattresses reportedly wind up in landfills across the country each day. Thankfully, Bye Bye Mattress is looking to reduce that number via its mattress recycling program which is offered in California, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. The company separates the steel, foam, fabric, and wood in used mattresses and box springs so the materials can be made into other products including carpet pad, landscaping mulch and much more.  

You want to look your best—but what if that comes at the price of the planet’s health? Thankfully, some of the biggest brands are making it easier than ever to embrace sustainable beauty. By Lindsy Van Gelder Everyone has a carbon footprint. But you also have a carbon face print, plus a carbon hair print, skin print—even an underarm print. Everything we slather on to make ourselves prettier has the potential to make the world an uglier place with problematic ingredients and packaging. It used to be that consumers who cared about the environment got very little help. You could buy your cosmetics from a small rack at the health food store and upcycle jars and bottles as knickknacks. You could also be the Debbie Downer who reminded everyone that rain forests and rabbits were suffering for our vanity.   But times—and beauty products—are changing. A survey by Unilever-—the maker of   Dove, Vaseline, Love Beauty and Planet, and scores of other brands—found that 78% of U.S. consumers now feel better when they buy products that are sustainably produced. “Consumers are looking for ways to help make an impact,” says Esi Eggleston Bracey, EVP and COO of  North American Beauty and Personal Care at Unilever. As part of a global green strategy to help their customers do just that, she adds, Unilever is working to “make sure 100% of our plastic packaging is re-usable, recyclable or compostable” by 2025. The company’s wide-ranging Sustainable Living Plan also includes a project to transform the industry that manufactures palm oil, an ingredient in shampoo and makeup, among many other products. The cultivation of oil palms has caused severe deforestation, threatening many species, including orangutans in Southeast Asia.   Meanwhile, in a program serving children all over the world who face severe health challenges from contaminated water, Procter & Gamble provided its 14 billionth liter of clean drinking water last year. L’Oréal launched the world’s first shower-proof paper bottle as part of its Seed Phytonutrients personal care line. What’s more, “today all our plants and distribution centers—19 facilities across 12 states—run on renewable energy,” notes Danielle Azoulay, head of corporate social responsibility and sustainability for L’Oréal USA. Several other large beauty companies (and small ones) have also gone over to the green side. And that may be thanks to shoppers like you. “Consumers are starting to push the market, and companies pick up on that,” says Carla Burns, research analyst at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG). But as lovely as it is that many big corporations have stepped up, she adds, consumers need to remain vigilant. For cosmetics, “the FDA still does not regulate words like ‘natural’ or ‘non-toxic,’ ” she explains, and not every company is committed to helping customers make healthy choices. “Packaging can be misleading—lots of green and flowers and bamboo. Consumers need to do their homework about what’s in products and whether they want to put it on their bodies.” So the next time you’re walking the aisles and filling your basket, here are a few things to consider.

Transparency and Ingredients

Although she’s a fan of educated consumers, Burns acknowledges that “not everyone has a degree in chemistry,” and squinting at labels can only get you so far. Plenty of controversial chemicals—DEA, BHA, phthalates, parabens, phenols, triclosan, formaldehyde and more—are permitted in beauty products (American products, anyway; some 1,000 ingredients that have been banned in consumer products in Europe are permitted here).   Even if you were to memorize which chemicals might be irritating or dangerous, they often go by multiple names that can appear on an ingredient list. Plus, federal regulation allows companies to leave some “trade secret” ingredients off  their labels. That’s why the EWG created the Skin Deep Cosmetics Database, a website that lists the ingredients and potential hazards of nearly 70,000 products and lets users search by ingredient, product name or company. (The app has been downloaded 1.3 million times.) Ecocert, a European group that operates in scores of countries, including the U.S., certifies that cosmetics contain organic, sustainable, non-synthetic ingredients. Products that pass inspection carry the “Ecocert Organic” or “Ecocert Natural” seal.

Animal Welfare

Again, lists can help shoppers separate the sheep from the goats, as it were. But you can also get a little help from a label’s graphics: Look for the cruelty-free Leaping Bunny logo, awarded by a consortium of eight animal welfare groups, including the Humane Society.   Another list of companies that don’t test on animals is available from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (whose logo is, confusingly, also a bunny.) In addition, the PETA website features a list of cruelty-free vegan companies. (Burt’s Bees, for example, is cruelty-free, but because its products use honey and beeswax, they’re not vegan.) And some brands, like Unilever’s Schmidt’s Naturals, provide funding to animal-loving causes. Its new cruelty-free vegan deodorant, Lily of the Valley, was inspired by a favorite scent of primatologist Jane Goodall, with 5% of all proceeds earmarked for the Jane Goodall Institute.  

Packaging

You may have heard about that garbage patch in the Pacific that’s twice the size of Texas. In fact, the World Economic Forum has predicted that at the rate humans are trashing the ocean, there will be, pound for pound, more plastic than fish by 2050. And beauty brands are literally cleaning up their acts. For instance, a new bottle for Procter & Gamble’s Herbal Essences shampoo is fabricated with 25% former beach plastic.   You can have a hand in this as well. Familiarize yourself with the types of materials your town recycles, then aim to buy products with appropriate packaging whenever possible. And commit to actually doing the recycling—even if it means remembering to grab that empty shampoo bottle out of the master bathroom and bring it down the stairs and out to the bin in the garage.   Granted, some beauty products are notoriously difficult to recycle—pump dispensers, hairspray triggers, eye shadow cases, lipstick tubes, pencils, shampoo and conditioner bottle caps and almost anything else that’s small. But one of the newest frontiers in eco-beauty is mail-in recycling. Garnier has teamed up with the private recycling company TerraCycle to sponsor free recycling of any brand’s plastics and packaging. It’s small efforts like these that will eventually add up and, ideally, leave our children with a Pacific that has a garbage patch that’s even smaller than Rhode Island.  

An online “unveiling” recently of a Ventura beach bench made from recycled cigarette butts quickly generated more than 153 social media shares and dozens of comments on the Ventura Parks and Recreation Division Facebook page. Plenty of web surfers took the obvious opportunity to crack punny jokes. Most were along the line of the official name given to the cigarette butt collection and recycling program organized by the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation, “Hold on to Your Butt.” The city and the nonprofit have purchased and installed 103 metal containers in areas where cigarette butt litter was common, despite a city ordinance banning smoking in public areas. Volunteers empty approximately 4,000 butts per month from these receptacles. Combined with the butts they collect from beach cleanup events, they have collected more than 270,000 butts in a little over two years, according to Juli Marciel, Surfrider’s coordinator for the program. Volunteers put these collected butts into boxes with postage-paid labels supplied by Terracycle, a company recycling a wide variety of products. Recycling by mail is too expensive to be viable for nearly any material, but in the case of cigarettes, the program is made possible through sponsorship by a product manufacturer. In fact, the sponsorship funds are sufficient not just to pay for the free mailers, but also to donate a dollar per pound of collected cigarettes to Keep America Beautiful, a nonprofit focused on litter prevention and cleanup. Surfrider also obtains sponsorships noted on these containers, helping fund the cost of the containers. Some who comment on the sponsored recycling program see corporate responsibility, and others see “green washing” focused on improving perceptions of a product through the misleading appearance of eco-friendliness. Lars Davenport, environmental specialist with the city of Ventura, points out a major benefit of the containers and the bench. “Cigarette butts tend to be disposed wherever a cigarette is finished,” he said, noting the crucial role of convenience in preventing litter, “and some people seem to think their cigarette litter is not significant” because some of it is biodegradable. A bench made from butts drives home a message about the ubiquity of butts and their plastic content. MORE: Try using Ventura County's sunshine to get your clothes dry Indeed, Brian Hanck, a spokesperson for Terracycle, noted in an email, “We can put about 20% ... cellulose acetate (plastic from cigarette butts) … into a bench, and the benches are about 80 pounds, so we would estimate that 15,000 cigarette butts go into one park bench.” Cigarette butts are the most common form of litter, according to the Keep America Beautiful website, which notes that putting them in planters and disposing of them in waterways is also litter; butts often wash out and end up on shores. Terracycle also provides sponsor-subsidized mail-in recycling programs for other products, ranging from Burt’s Bees lip care products to Solo cups. Additionally, Terracycle has many non-sponsored programs, some of which seem designed to attract sponsors. For example, for $102, you can purchase a small shipping box (11 inches by 11 inches by 20 inches) and a postage-paid return shipping label to send Terracycle your used chewing gum. According to Brian Hanck, the Terracycle spokesman: “Chewing gum is made from polymers which are synthetic plastics that do not biodegrade. The … gum is sanitized and blended, then converted into plastic pellets. These specific plastic pellets are usually used in creating new products made of rubber or plastic.” Among other items, the company also has mail-in recycling programs for coffee capsules, pens, plastic gloves, detergent booster pouches, ready-made pasta bags, contact lenses and the blister packs containing the lenses. Terracycle previously had sponsor funding for a program to recycle mixed plastics from beach clean-ups, but its website indicates the program is no longer “accepting new partners” for that program.