Count on good old American innovation for a way to recycle cigarette butts. A New Jersey-based company called TerraCycle recently launched such a program in New Orleans, installing 50 cigarette butt recycling receptacles in the downtown. New Orleans is the first U.S. city to offer the service, but TerraCycle already collects butts in cities in Canada, France, Germany and Scandinavia. The company composts the tobacco, shreds and cleans the fiber-like plastic filters and melts them into plastic pellets for use in plastic lumber or pallets. TerraCycle refers to this program as its Cigarette Waste Brigade. On the company website, CEO and founder Tom Szaky claims TerraCycle collected more than 10 million cigarette butts in the first year in Canada. In New Orleans, TerraCycle will even pay for the butts, $4 a pound. Butt brigade is but one TerraCycle program. Szaky began the company while he was a freshman at Princeton University, entering a business-idea contest with a plan to feed earthworms on organic food waste and use their castings as plant food. The idea gained a foothold. Today TerraCycle, the self-described "Outsmart Waste" company, specializes in providing free waste collection programs for hard-to-recycle materials, then converting them into affordable, green products. Anyone who's ever gone on litter patrol knows that cigarette butts are everywhere. They're dirty and they seem to last forever. Installing receptacles on downtown utility poles makes sense, because most public places don't allow smoking inside any more, and smokers typically sit on benches or stand outside to puff. Having designated receptacles might help keep the streets a bit cleaner. If TerraCycle can make even a small dent in these unwelcome castoffs, it will be a boon to the communities that embrace the program. Next challenge: used chewing gum!