A City of Vancouver street team recently handed out pocket-sized ashtrays to smokers encouraging them to recycle their cigarettes but the initiative has been criticized because the small containers are made of plastic... The city launched a pilot program to recycle cigarette butts in 2013 with TerraCycle as part of its Greenest City 2020 Action Plan installing 110 new recycling containers in the downtown core.

Turning discarded cigarette butts into something that can be reused in the future... The receptacles will be emptied by city workers, shipped to a company called TerraCycle where it will be sterilized and separated with the tobacco and paper composted, and the filters turned into plastic pellets that will be used in a variety of industrial applications such as plastic shipping pallets.

Hamilton's Barton Village BIA installs an interactive cigarette disposal box where smokers are invited to vote in a poll... They say a particular hot spot is in front of the Hamilton general hospital. Once collected the butts are shipped off to “Terracycle.” there the tobacco, ash and paper are turned into compost and the plastic in the filters is recycled.

EcoSuperior, an environmental group recycling cigarettes with TerraCycle, created an EcoTip video about the program.

To give you an idea of how popular pens still are, consider this: Through a popular recycling program available at 300 Staples locations across Canada, TerraCycle and Staples have worked together to provide a second life for many writing instruments. How many? 1.4 million so far! That is a lot of school permission notes! In fact, these stores will accept almost any writing utensil, including all brands of pens and caps, mechanical pencils, markers and marker caps, highlighters/caps, and permanent markers.

As a former smoker, to me the only thing worse than the stale smoke smell that lingered in my hair and clothes was the stench of spent cigarette butts... Counted by piece, cigarette butts top the city’s litter list and are the second most common item found during shoreline cleanups. Many people don’t realize they can be recycled. Once or twice a week city crews empty the receptacles and the butts are shipped to TerraCycle’s recycling plant in Ontario.

My kids are truly ALWAYS hungry. I like to take nutrient dense foods along that are also easy to grab and go. The Love Child Organics products have really come in handy for us this summer... And thanks to Love Child’s new partnership with TerraCycle Canada, the pouches are recyclable, which supports our family’s constant mission to reduce waste.

TerraCycle’s partnership with Procter & Gamble and SUEZ to put out a fully recyclable shampoo bottle made from beach plastic for Head & Shoulders creates a market for this material, viewing it as more sustainable, economically and environmentally, than producing additional plastics.

#PlasticFreeJuly aligns itself with global conversations on plastic, and TerraCycle has some tips to help you make better decisions in some of the places where plastic might still be clogging up your habits.

Recycling the pods as a response to customers social responsibility concerns was a huge win for Nespresso. One and a half billion pods end up in a landfill every year in Canada, according to Norm Miller, an Ontario legislator who put forth a private member’s bill seeking a ban on non-compostable pods last year. Nespresso has created partnerships with programs like TerraCycle to promote their vision “Nespresso is committed to ensuring sustainability throughout their operations, seeking to create shared value and positive impact for farmers, consumers and society at large, while caring for the environment.”