“It’s disgusting and wasteful, so I wanted to do something about it,” Stoner says. No, she’s not going to spend her off-duty time preaching about the evils of smoking and trying to get people to quit. Accepting that smoking will never be fully eradicated, she’d like to do something about all of those cigarette butts, which, contrary to popular belief, are not biodegradable. So Stoner, 33, is distributing metal coffee cans to willing restaurants and bars to fill with butts and other cigarette-related trash before sending it all off to New Jersey-based TerraCycle, which is internationally known for finding new uses for hard-to-recycle materials. Servers can now end their shifts by emptying ashtrays into her cans rather than into the trash. Already, The Hutch’s neighbor, American Dream Pizza, as well as The Lodge Bar & Grill near Southeast 66th Avenue and Powell Boulevard, and Patti’s Deli in Gresham have agreed to participate. TerraCycle will rework waste collected through the “cigarette brigade” into a variety of industrial products, such as plastic pallets, and the company will compost any remaining tobacco. Stoner heard about TerraCycle while collecting Capri Sun pouches to help raise funds for Woodmere Elementary School in Southeast Portland, where her son is in kindergarden. The key to her success in collecting juice pouches was enlisting the support of Capri Sun drinkers, and she expects smokers’ cooperation will be essential to her latest campaign. Servers might have time to empty ashtrays into cans, she says, but they’re not about to search gutters for extra butts.