Montpelier, Vermont – TerraCycle, the world’s leader in the collection and repurposing of complex waste streams, has joined forces with Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District (CVSWMD) and local community organizations to recycle the world’s most littered item – cigarette butts. After being shipped to TerraCycle, the waste collected through the program is processed into plastic pellets for use in a variety of recycled products while the remaining tobacco is composted.   “Although we don’t want to encourage smoking, cigarettes aren’t going away anytime soon and when possible it’s part of our mission to keep materials out of the landfill and send them to outlets to recapture as many embedded resources as possible,” said Charlotte Low, former operations manager for CVSWMD. “Our program really gained steam when a group dubbed the “Trash Tramps”, a group of Monteplier senior citizens, volunteered to pick-up littered butts throughout the city and applied for a CVSWMD grant to place cigarette receptacles in highly-traveled areas, as well.”   On average, The Trash Tramps’ volunteers collect about 5 gallons of cigarette butts every two weeks, which translates to a significant amount of waste being diverted from sidewalks, parks, landfills, or even our shared waterways.   Through this program, CVSWMD is not only addressing the nation’s most commonly littered item but also a form of potentially harmful plastic waste. Since implementing the program, six cigarette collection receptacles have been placed near exceptionally busy street-corners, benches and parking lots throughout Montpelier. CVSWMD also provided grant funding to the Union Agricultural Society to purchase three cigarette butlers located throughout the Turnbridge fairgrounds.   Participating in TerraCycle’s Cigarette Recycling Program is CVSWMD’s latest effort to grow their socially-responsible, environmental initiatives. In addition to introducing cigarette recycling, CVSWMD’s works to set a sustainable-example for the community through operation of the Additional Recyclables Collection Center (ARCC) in Barre City where nearly 40 hard-to-recycle materials, including shoes, pellet bags, and waste from various TerraCycle brand-sponsored collection programs are aggregated.   All of the collected waste collected through the Cigarette Recycling Program is shipped to TerraCycle for recycling. When processed, the paper and tobacco is separated from the filter and composted. The filter is recycled into plastic pellets which can be used by manufacturers to make a number of products such as shipping pallets, ashtrays and park benches.   “These receptacles will help keep Montpelier free of one of the most littered items on the planet,” said Tom Szaky, the founder and CEO of TerraCycle. “With this program, Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District is taking a step to reduce the amount of trash going to landfill while also preserving the area’s natural beauty.”   TerraCycle has collected hundreds of millions of cigarette butts globally. Additionally, through its various recycling programs, it has engaged over 200 million people across 21 countries to collect and recycle more than eight billion pieces of waste that were otherwise non-recyclable.

MONTREAL | Several residents of Verdun joined forces on Saturday to collect old abandoned butts on the sidewalks of their neighborhood. As an incentive: the volunteers received a beer from the Benelux neighborhood bar.   In all, the citizen group Tomorrow Verdun was able to gather 51 participants, children as adults, who crisscrossed the neighborhood in search of butts. As an incentive, volunteers were treated to a beer from the Benelux microbrewery in exchange for their hard work.   The group attacked the neighborhood's metro stations, LaSalle, De l'Église and Verdun, as well as the Arthur-Therrien pool. These were four strategic locations, according to one of the two instigators of the event, Céline-Audrey Beauregard.   Large cigarette butts have been sent to a recycling center, TerraCycle, where they will be treated. The citizen group would like to repeat the "megofest", the name given to the event, five or six times in the next year, said Ms. Beauregard. She calls these events "unifying" and important to create "a sense of belonging to the neighborhood".   The volunteer said she was inspired by an already popular movement in Europe to collect butts. Indeed, in some bars of the old continent, customers can receive, in exchange for a drink, a bottle or a bag filled with butts, a free consumption.   "It was, in my opinion, a good initiative that could very well be implemented here. In this way, we could also raise awareness about the damage of throwing cigarette butts into the wild, "she explained. Other gestures For the next edition, the organizer would like to sell ashtrays to passersby smokers, at low cost, in team with Mégot Zero (a program that aims to implement ashtrays in private and public areas), in order not only to raise awareness, but also to offer them another option than leaving cigarettes in the wild.   The Verdun Demain group planned to attend the borough council meeting on Tuesday evening to present the council with several initiatives, including the addition of ashtrays in non-smoking areas and awareness-raising elements on the doors of the stations. subway.  

Almost all companies are looking for ways to reduce their environmental impact and to become more efficient in the process. What if you could turn your harvest residuals or production scrap into your own pallets, thus eliminating the need to consume other resources needed to make pallets and have them delivered to you? This post looks at some surprising pallet materials you might not have heard about.   With continued interest in the circular economy, there is growing interest. One of the ways to bridge sustainability and efficiency for pallet usage, according to Dr. Mark White, president of White & Company, is to explore the opportunity for pallets made from various natural constituents that are recyclable and biodegradable. Increasingly, entrepreneurs and researchers are looking to agricultural crops and residuals as potential pallet stock.   To take a step back, wood pallets have long dominated pallet usage, and for good reason. They are relatively inexpensive and strong, providing a viable solution for many supply chains. Plastic pallets are highly valued in several applications (and growing at a faster rate than wood), as are niche options such as presswood, paper and metal.  Nevertheless, there always seems to be a new pallet guaranteed to raise eyebrows. Back in 2012, TerraCycle made headlines by announcing it was using recycled cigarette butts to make pallets. Another company makes pallets from recycled carpeting. Chances are, you haven’t seen any of those innovative pallets carrying merchandise in your supply chain. The quest continues, however, and agricultural fibers are garnering an increasing amount of attention.   “Fibers from banana trees and hemp, for example, are from sources that grow quickly and offer higher yields than trees,” Dr. White told Logistics Management Magazine in 2018. “…once banana trees stop producing they are otherwise useless, and hemp can be rotated every six months,” White explained. “Companies are molding these alternative fibers with or without adhesives into pallet form then testing to essentially try to improve on Mother Nature.”

 

Banana Pallets

As Dr. White noted, banana stems can be produced into pallets. Yellow Pallet is a Netherlands-based company that creates production systems designed to press or extrude banana waste into materials that can be assembled into pallets. The company recently reported that its banana fiber pallet blocks have now meet EPAL (European Pallet Association) technical standards. Given that 21 million pallets of bananas are shipped annually, there is a ready potential market for those pallets. The company is currently installing a production facility in Costa Rica. Note the video from Yellow Pallet.

 

Coco Pallets

According to CocoPallet International, a Netherlands-based producer of pallets made from coconut waste, 70 billion coconuts are produced annually, while less than 15 percent of the husk material is utilized. Present applications for husks include flooring and brushes. Around 85 percent of waste material remains, however. As such, this residual presents the opportunity for coconut-based pallets. The material is molded, using a natural binder to help form the pallets.   Founded by Dutch entrepreneur Michiel Vos, the initiative is based on technology developed by scientists at the University of Wageningen, the Netherlands. Vos recently appeared on a supply chain podcast to tell the story of Coco Pallet.  Vos was recently interviewed on the Let’s Talk Supply Chain podcast.

On Friday (Aug. 9), interns with the Downtown Surrey BIA spent part of the afternoon collecting and counting cigarette butts from people in the community.   Area enhancement intern Jeanette Lim said the idea was to combat cigarette waste, with a slogan of “be your city’s superhero.” Some of the interns dressed up in some familiar superhero costumes such as Captain Marvel and Spider-Man.   “Our goal is to get cigarette butts off the streets because that is the number one most littered item in the world,” Lim told the Now-Leader during the event, adding that “litter is a huge problem in downtown Surrey.”   “So we’re trying to tackle that issue.”   For the cigarette buy-back, people could get five cents per butt, with a cap of $50 per person.   The event also included cash prizes. The person to collect the most cigarette butts would win $150, second place was $125, third place was $100, fourth place was $75 and fifth place was $50.   “We had this one guy come with a massive bag and it was a lot of butts. We didn’t even bother counting them, we just gave him the capped money,” she said.   While the event was supposed to last four hours, Lim said they closed up early because they ran out of cash.   Lim said it was mostly people living on the streets who came through with cigarette butts, “which is a good thing because they need the money as well and they can help clean up the city.”   The Downtown Surrey BIA received a $500-grant from the City of Surrey for the pilot project, and Lim said the hope is to be able to bring it back next year on a slightly larger scale.   She said Victoria and Vancouver have both done cigarette buy-back programs.   “I’m hoping that if more cities get on this idea then they will be more aware of the problem of cigarette butts being littered. It’s small and it’s not very noticeable, but it’s damaging.”   After collecting the butts, Lim said they will then be sent to TerraCycle.   The company has a cigarette waste recycling program that recycles all parts of the extinguished cigarettes, cigarette filters, cigar stubs, plastic packaging, inner foil packaging, rolling paper and ash.   According to TerraCycle, the cigarettes and packaging “are separated by composition and melted into hard plastic that can be remolded to make new recycled industrial products, such as plastic pallets.” The ash and tobacco are separated out and composted in a “specialized process.”   Also this month, the BIA has been handing out “pocket ashtrays.”   “The idea is that instead of putting your cigarette butts on the floor, you put it in this reusable bag or pouch, and then when it’s full, you empty it into the garbage can instead of having it all around the city,” Lim said.   The cigarette buy-back initiative was part of the city’s Love Where You Live program.  

The collected cigarette butts are then recycled through a program offered by TerraCycle — a company that bills itself as specializing in the recycling of typically non-recyclable waste.

Five TerraCycle brand cigarette butt receptacles have been installed along Pinetree Way, between Anson Avenue and the Lafarge Skytrain station. Two more TerraCycle receptacles have recently been installed in the Como Lake Village area and several more may be installed in this area following the completion of the FortisBC project on Como Lake Avenue.

Hamiltonians are fighting back against the most littered item in the world, cigarette butts. Today, A Greener Future in collaboration with the City of Hamilton held their 5th annual Butt Blitz.   There is over 6 billion pounds of cigarette litter every single year. They may be small, but they do add up quickly and they are very toxic. Butt Blitz is a program where people pick up cigarette litter is just one of the initiatives that Rochelle Byrne, founder of A Greener Future, has organized to clean up Canada. This year, volunteers targeted the beach and the downtown core.   So we all know that there are toxins in cigarettes, and when they are smoked, that ends up in the filter, and then when the cigarette ends up in water, all those toxins can leech out and that can end up in our drinking water. The filter part is made of a plastic material that will break apart as the butts get washed away into our sewers or storm water system. The plastic will end up in the lake or in the soil but will never fully decompose.   Cigarette butts are one of the most ubiquitous forms of litter. Over 3.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered annually across the globe. One of the biggest problems is that people do not have enough cigarette waste reciprocals, convenient enough for them to put their cigarettes out. So if you cannot find one, you can always purchase a disposable one. It has got a metal inside for you to put your cigarette out, store it, and eventually send it to a company like TerraCycle.   TerraCycle is a global company that offers recycling solutions for almost every form of waste. They turn cigarette butts into industrial skids.   Rochelle Byrne is tallying the numbers, she says that Hamilton, today alone, in just two hours, collected well over 35,000 cigarette butts. The effort of roughly 35 volunteers.

A three-hour single-day clean up event has rid Hamilton of tens of thousands of cigarette butts in the city’s downtown core. Saturday’s ‘Butt Blitz’ was an affair tied to a prevention program launched this past week, aimed at reducing cigarette litter across the city. Individual volunteers armed with supply bags and gloves spread out around the city’s lower end to pick up butts in that neighbourhood. Upon completion of the event, the city claimed volunteers had picked up 37,052 cigarette butts. READ MORE: City of Hamilton launches battle against cigarette butts A month-long campaign to take cigarette garbage off Ontario streets was launched at the beginning of April with environmental preservation volunteer group A Greener Future behind the initiative. To date, the group claims to have picked up 772,368 cigarette butts off streets in six provinces across Canada since starting the program in 2015. WATCH: Toronto fire launches campaign to stop tossing cigarette butts off balconies (October 2018) Cigarette filters are made from a non-biodegradable plastic and are considered pollution. A Greener Future says the butts are toxic and pose a threat to domestic animals and wildlife, like dogs and fish who can mistake the ends as food. Cigarette butts picked up by volunteers in Hamilton on Saturday will be sent to TerraCycle Canada for recycling. The plastics inside the waste can be separated by composition and melted into hard plastic that can make new recycled industrial products, such as plastic pallets.    

 

In two hours before the rain could return Saturday afternoon, Waste Watcher volunteers had gathered 5,540 pieces of trash, 1,066 cigarette butts and three syringes from Owen Sound's east shoreline. And yes, they counted them. Styrofoam, broken glass, food wrappers, coffee cups, beverage bottles and cans as well as pieces of clothing and unidentified plastic made up most of the trash. Large items like eavestroughing, a plastic chair and a piece of a toilet were carried back to the dumpster (thank you Miller Waste) on a bike trailer (thanks Bikeface!) Some tires and rusted metal barrels were buried too deep in the frozen shoreline to be removed. City councillor Carol Mertonwas filling her third canvas bag when she said “I had no idea there was this much garbage here.” She carefully removed two of the syringes, and we spoke about safe sharps disposal in the city. She and councillor Scott Greig attended the "Talking Trash" social after the pick-up to learn what more we can do about our waste. In the social following the pick-up, Rochelle Byrne of A Greener Future said that in some communities syringes, condoms, and tampon applicators are not thown away where they were found, but have been flushed down toilets and then entered the water in a sewage bypass at the treatment plant during a heavy rain. Byrne said styrofoam breaks off docks and bouys, and even properly disposed of waste can be blown around or picked out of receptacles by birds and animals. Reducing the use of non-degradable and single-use materials is the primary goal. Recycling has high energy and resource costs. The higher the number in the triangle (and usually darker the colour) on a recyclable material, the more difficult and energy consuming it is to recycle, and often the smaller the market for the end product. "Recycling is a for-profit business," she said. "Just because you put it in your blue box doesn't mean it will not end up in landfill." Byrne participates in trash pick-ups all along the Lake Ontario shoreline. She is currently working on the “Butt Blitz”, an annual Spring event that aims to remove as much cigarette butt litter as possible from the environment. Volunteers pick up the non-degradable cigarette butts locally and they’re sent to TerraCycle Canada for recycling. Yes, recycling! - into plastic benches and industrial pallets. It is not about smoker-shaming, " Byrne says, "It's about keeping this material out of our water and wildlife."  Access to public disposal containers, she said, helps smokers change their habits and dispose of their butts responsibly. Byrne and her husband Mike had spent the morning at the Owen Sound Farmers' Market, selling reusable and low-waste items from produce bags to bamboo cutlery and toothbrushes, and speaking to local residents about small changes that can have a big impact on our waste stream. Saturday's pick-up coordinator, St. Mary’s Grade 12 student Meredith MacFarlane was encouraged by the efforts of the group. “It was a pretty wet day, but that motivated us to get the trash off the ground before it can make its way into our harbour. I just wish everyone would realize they are contributing to the decline in water quality and marine life when they casually toss a cigarette butt, candy wrapper or plastic coffee lid on the ground.” Meredith and Owen Sound Waste Watcher Facilitator Laura Wood hope to present the findings of the day to Owen Sound City Council within a month and urge immediate action to reduce single-use plastic and improve awareness of the problem. “Our planet has limited resources and we need to learn how to use these resources wisely. We look forward to more events like this in the days ahead,” says Wood.

Mayors are being challenged in competition for the biggest haul of butts     A Beamsville-based group of volunteers united by their goal to decrease Niagara’s environmental footprint is asking for the public’s help.   The Eco-Defenders are hosting Lincoln’s annual Butt Blitz on Saturday, April 27, where participants will spend roughly four hours picking up cigarette butts.   Last year’s blitz collected over 17,000 butts from Grimsby and Lincoln alone, and over 239,000 from across Canada.   New this year, the group is unveiling the Mayors’ Biggest Butts Competition, where the mayor of the municipality with the most butts collected will win a trophy.   “It is our intention that this could become an annual competition and the trophy would get passed around to the winners,” co-ordinator Jane Gadsby said in her letter to the mayors.   Every littered butt retrieved will be sent to TerraCycle, where it will be turned into plastic and used to make products like shipping pallets. Tobacco will also be separated and sent out to be composted.   Anybody wishing to support the effort can do so by notifying the group in advance of especially littered areas, can volunteer to join the cleanup or can donate prizes for volunteers of all ages.   Lincoln Butt Blitz volunteers will meet at the Fleming Centre, in Beamsville, at 10 a.m. and will clean until roughly 2 p.m. For more information, visit the groups Facebook page.