TerraCycle, which specializes in hard-to-recycle waste, collects cigarette butts, which are then turned into industrial products like plastic pallets.

It’s a message the volunteer with the Huntington Beach chapter of Surfrider Foundation takes seriously, for the past three years helping to implement a canister program called “Hold Onto Your Butts” that has gathered more than 250,000 cigarette butts.Then, Sellers gathers the piles of butts each month or so in big plastic bags and takes it to the U. S. Post Office to ship them out to be recycled to a company called Terracycle.

One approach to reducing cigarette litter encourages recycling through TerraCycle’s “Cigarette Waste Brigade,” where volunteers collect cigarette butts and send them to the company in a postage-paid package. The company then turns them into plastic that can be used to make new products — even chairs.