Dr. Bill Cors, left, Chief quality medical quality officer at Pocono Medical Center, Dr. Marcia Welsh, president of ESU, Alyson Patascher, prevention services coordinator at ESU were part of the Kick Butts Day which was Monday through Wednesday. Here they are at the Hoeffner Science and Technology on East Stroudsburg University campus. The cigarette butts were picked up on campus and also at Pocono Medical Center grounds. Two huge garbage bags were collected. Center Cigarette butts were picked up on campus and will we taken to TerraCycle which will recycle the butts and the money raised, will go back to the Dale and Frances Hughes Cancer Center. Cigarettes that are not disposed of properly can damage the environment by harming wildlife and water systems.

RECYCLING entrepreneur Tom Szaky is stubbing out the world's cigarette problem - one butt at a time. The 30-year-old who dropped out of Princeton University to start his innovative company TerraCycle in New Jersey, said there's no such thing as rubbish, even when you're talking about the contents of ashtrays.

“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.

The merchant is collecting cigarette butts in sand-filled buckets this year at the popular holiday market so that they can be recycled into plastic lumber, shipping pallets, lawn furniture and ash trays.“The idea of plastic lumber really resonates with me because I’m a woodworker,” he said. “Instead of covering the beach with cigarette butts, we can build the boardwalk with plastic lumber made out of cigarette butts. How cool is that?”

Kubiak has placed four buckets in the outdoor smoking areas of Christkindlmarkt with a sign that says, “Make your butt useful.” Smokers have responded and the buckets were brimming with butts last week.

Kubiak will send the butts he collects to TerraCycle, a Trenton, N.J., company that specializes in finding ways to recycle items that previously were only sent to landfills. It launched the cigarette recycling initiative in the United States last month, company spokeswoman Lauren Taylor said.

“We worked for more than a year to find a solution for recycling cigarette butts because they are the world’s most littered item and account for 38 percent of all U.S. roadway waste,” Taylor said. “We’ve already collected just shy of 200,000 in the U.S. alone in less than a month. The alternative to recycling cigarette butts is what happens to them now. They go to landfills, get littered along roadways, in parks, public spaces, shopping malls, sidewalks, waterways, etc. They are the No. 1 item recovered during the annual Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup Day.”

Kubiak has placed four cigarette butt collection buckets in the outdoor smoking areas of Christkindlmarkt with a sign that says, "Make your butt useful." Smokers have responded and the buckets were brimming with butts last week. Kubiak will send the butts he collects to TerraCycle, a Trenton, N.J., company that specializes in finding ways to recycle items that previously were only sent to landfills. It launched the cigarette recycling initiative in the United States last month, company spokeswoman Lauren Taylor said.

TerraCycle mentioned by KWSB for new cigarette recycling program.

Beaches, Butts and Straws

Last weekend brought beautiful weather to Massachusetts.  It was warm with just a hint of fall peeking through.   I love these days!  Best of all, I was able to spend Sunday afternoon with my daughter and her Girl Scout troop on a beautiful beach in Gloucester, MA called Wingaersheek.  I had never been here before.  It is so picturesque and the sand is as fine and soft as powder.  It even has the stereotypical New England light house in the distance!

One of the most pervasive types of litter is cigarette butts. And contrary to popular belief, they are not biodegradable. Most cigarette filters are composed of cellulose acetate, a synthetic plastic-like substance used commonly for photographic film. Thousands of cigarette butts litter our roadsides, sidewalks, parking lots, and beaches. In fact, according to Ocean Conservancy.org, they are the number one litter item found. A couple of companies are working on solutions that range from recycling the butts into plastic (TerraCycle now has a fundraising brigade for butts), and InnovaGreen in Ohio uses the butts to manufacture coatings and adhesives as well as generate employment, as the butts must processed by hand.

While most of his peers were at the library, or the bar, college freshmen Tom Szaky was busy launching a business out of his dorm room. For his first product he turned worm-poop into fertilizer as a way to transform waste into something useful. Since then he’s turned that first product into a multi-million dollar business Terracycle, with clients including Walmart and Home Depot. Inspiyr spoke with Tom about the mission of Terracycle, his favorite type of trash, and some advice for budding entrepreneurs or anyone looking to achieve their dreams.

"Nothing needs to go to landfill. We're about finding solutions for as many types of waste as possible," says Denise Barnard, Director of Communications at TerraCycle Canada. I spoke with Denise to better understand the company behind the ever-increasing line of products I've been noticing around me. Upcycling is now a recognizable term for using every aspect of waste to create another product. How has the Canadian market been responding to the TerraCycle line of solutions and products? If the company's growth here is any indication, it seems that Canadians are ready to help change the concept of garbage fromwaste to useful.