PUR Water Filter Systems, from Helen of Troy Health and Home, officially launches in Canada today at an event featuring Dr. David Suzuki discussing the individual responsibility each Canadian has to the environment, and more specifically, water quality. PUR also launches its environmental stewardship and recycling program in conjunction with TerraCycle.   The next generation of PUR water filtration systems are certified to remove 99% of lead from drinking water. PUR launches two categories today as follows:   PUR Ultimate Pitcher Filtration System with Lead Reduction in 7-cup and 11-cup formats, plus respective filters. PUR pitchers are certified by WQA (Water Quality Association) to remove 14 contaminants including 99% of lead, 96% of mercury and 92% of certain pesticides, more than any other brand. 1 PUR Advanced Faucet Filtration System, plus respective filter. PUR faucet filters are certified to remove over 70 contaminants including 99% of lead, 96% of mercury and 92% of certain pesticides, more than any other brand. 1 PUR pitcher and faucet water filtration systems feature MAXION® Filter Technology; PUR's unique formulation approach for blending carbon and ion exchange materials for maximum contaminant reduction. PUR's water filtration systems are certified by both the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) and WQA to remove 99% of lead in drinking water.   "Drinking water takes a long journey when it leaves local treatment facilities and it's often not as clean once it gets to home faucets," advises Mr. Michael Mitchell, Director of Advanced Technologies for Helen of Troy Health and Home. According to Health Canada, Canadian Water Network and Canadian Water Quality Association, a majority of water infrastructures are aging and that increases the risk for contaminants such as lead, mercury, chlorine, pollutants, pesticides, and microbial cysts. 2,3,4   Kevin Wong, Executive Director of Canadian Water Quality Association confirms traces of these contaminants are found in regular municipal drinking water. "CWQA has been championing testing and establishing guidelines for safe drinking water with all levels of government for many years," said Mr. Wong.   MAXION® Filter Technology, empowers consumers to care for their water with an affordable solution (pitchers and faucet filtration systems) to provide healthier, great-tasting water and peace of mind. However, when it comes to the PUR Advanced Faucet Filtration system, it features PUR MineralClear®, which filters water over natural minerals for a crisp, refreshing taste, plus it removes 10x more contaminants than the leading brand water pitcher. 5   Mr. Mitchell concludes, "The MAXION filtration system is an industry leading technology that reduces contaminants that may be found in drinking water. For example, PUR's pitchers reduce 14 contaminants, and the faucet filtration systems reduce over 70 contaminants. Both the pitcher and faucet filter systems are certified to remove 99% of lead, plus the taste and odour of chlorine".   According to Dr. David Suzuki, it's becoming more important for the individual to care not only for the environment, but to take action on a personal level. Dr. Suzuki's latest research and work dedicated to the challenge of the 21st century and setting the bottom-line in the anthropocene, reveals that humans have a dependence on clean air and water, and that the web of all of life on earth is responsible for cleansing, replenishing and creating air and water amongst other factors.   PUR takes environmental stewardship very seriously, and in addition to creating an industry leading water filtration system, has gone one step further by partnering with TerraCylce, with a national recycling program, to help consumers reduce the impact of the water filtration system and product packaging on the environment. The PUR Recycling Program is open to any interested individual, school, office, or community organization. Participation is as easy as signing up on the TerraCylce website (www.terracycle.ca). Upon registering, TerraCycle then sends pre-paid shipping labels to the end user to send back waste, and uses it to up-cycle, recycle, and even creates art with it!

Careless smokers are covering the West Coast’s serene landscape with cigarette butts and local ocean lovers have launched a campaign to convince them to cut it out. Surfrider Pacific Rim is installing canisters throughout Tofino and Ucluelet as part of a ‘Hold onto Your Butts’ campaign designed to keep beaches and streets clean while raising awareness of cigarette pollution. “The Hold onto Your Butt campaign is a fun and proactive approach to stopping the flow of cigarette litter from sidewalks to storm drains and eventually out to the ocean,” Surfrider Pacific Rim chair Michelle Hall told the Westerly News. “The campaign aims to raise awareness about the environmental impact of cigarette butt litter on our oceans, waves and beaches...We are asking you to hold onto your butt until you see a canister to put it in; it’s easy.” Roughly 12 canisters have been installed so far on district-owned land in Tofino and Ucluelet as well as outside participating businesses like Wolf in the Fog, Wickaninnish Inn and Howlers Restaurant. “We will be working very closely with public works and businesses to monitor the cigarettes collected in the canisters, and celebrate together the prevention of butts from reaching the ocean, and instead being recycled,” Hall said. “Surfrider Pacific Rim will champion the use of these canisters and launch the HOTYB campaign to ensure that the community gets involved, and becomes part of the solution not the pollution. Continuing our work in the schools, to provide education to our youth is vital.” She explained canisters are emptied regularly and the butts shipped to the mainland to be recycled. “With the help of volunteers, public works and this amazing community of people, we will collect those butts, and get them recycled into other plastic products through a company called TerraCycle,” she said. “TerraCycle have formed an amazing relationship with the Surfrider Foundation in the US, and so we reached out to their Canadian branch and they were stoked to start working with us too. They also offer recycle services for items that may be hard to recycle here on the Pacific Rim, and that’s something we will be looking at for the future too.” Local Surfrider volunteers have picked roughly 3,073 cigarette butts off local beaches in the past year, according to the foundation’s cleanup records, making butts the third most frequently found debris behind plastics and styrofoam. “This problem isn’t exclusive to the Pacific Rim here on the West Coast,” Hall said. “The California Coastal Commission reports that 36% of debris removed as part of its annual California Coastal Cleanup Day are cigarette butts and other smoking related items.” She said roughly 4.95 trillion cigarette butts are tossed into the environment each year and these butts can take up to 25 years to decompose and leach toxins that threaten marine life. “We would like to make the general public more aware of their actions when it comes to throwing butts out the window of a car or on a beach, but also provide the solutions to enable people to dispose of butts in the canisters,” she said. Hall has been thrilled so see local excitement surround the young campaign. “Locals are already excited for this initiative, not just because this means cleaner streets, but locals are now able to take part in the solution to end butt pollution,” she said. “Having the canisters and the education, means that we can help others dispose of their butts properly, and let them know that they are awesome because their butts get recycled into other products. Thats a win-win.” Anyone interested in installing a canister at their business is encouraged to contact Surfrider at chair@pacificrim.surfrider.org and anyone interested in volunteering for the campaign can reach out to volunteercoordinator@pacificrim.surfrider.org. “Surfrider is looking for volunteers to help champion this campaign, whether that’s becoming a volunteer for the HOTYB team, helping to collect butts, or being part of informing the community to dispose of butts in the canisters,” Hall said. “Got some fun slogans about holding onto your butt? Have a fun idea for a spoof campaign video on keeping butts of the street? Let us know.”

Fanshawe is one of the first schools in Southwestern Ontario to recycle cigarette butts from its campus. Sustainability staff are hopeful that participating in a unique waste management program designed by a company called TerraCycle will decrease the devastating environ­mental impact of a bad habit. To get the most out of the program, stu­dents are urged to do their part and throw their butts in the designated containers, which custodial staff empty regularly into a larger bin that will be shipped to TerraCycle’s Mississauga headquarters. In the past year, Fanshawe ac­cumulated just over 77 pounds of butts. TerraCycle specializes in break­ing down the compounds of materi­als that do not biodegrade or cannot be recycled by the public sector. They compost the natural tobacco content of cigarette butts, while recycling the plastic into materials used to build playgrounds and park benches. The program even pro­vides a reimbursement for its ship­ping fee in the form of a charitable donation. Fanshawe has chosen to redirect these funds back into its sustainability programming. As sustainability co-ordinator Amanda Whittingham said, smok­ers need to think twice before flick­ing their butt onto the ground. There is a common misconception among smokers that cigarette butts are made of cotton. There is even less awareness of how harmful butts are to the environment. “Billions of filters are left on the ground, and their toxins leech into the soil. They can poison the ground water or can clog up the sewage stations and sanitary water stations, and that goes straight into the river,” Whittingham said. At that point, birds and fish con­sume the filters, and the neurotox­ins and hormone disruptors within. Often, this prevents males from properly displaying for mating. Over the process of bioaccumula­tion, humans are likely to eventual­ly ingest the same poisons. While some schools are not able to afford the extra cost of supple­mentary sustainable programs, Fanshawe’s status as one of the province’s four largest colleges has allotted it the freedom to focus on progressing. According to Ivan Walker, senior manager at Facilities Operations and Sustainability, uti­lizing services like TerraCycle will help to set a precedent and pave the way for other colleges. “Fanshawe is also very much about utilizing our resources wise­ly, not only recycling after you’ve used them but also before you’ve used them,” Walker said. “If you happen to see any energy wastages you can also drop a line at sustain­ability@fanshawec.ca and we’ll see if we can attend to those issues.”

What should we do with those K-Cups? What do we do with “unrecyclable” items? Long-standing office supply chain Grand & Toy, operating since 1882 and now an ecommerce site also driven by direct sales, has solutions; the company is all-in when it comes to going green. Through innovative partnerships and by example, it has demonstrated a sincere and comprehensive dedication to sustainable practices, which invites socially conscious young employees and loyal customers. Last fall, Grand & Toy — owned by U.S. office supply retailer Office Depot, Inc. — issued its seventh annual Corporate Sustainability Report, based on its Seven Pillars of Sustainability program established in 2007. A 2014 survey of its key stakeholders — customers, suppliers and associates — ranked “the relative importance of each issue to all stakeholders. Green products and recycling were deemed the most important aspects, followed by packaging and transportation efficiency.” The recent sustainability report highlights progress across several key areas, including recycling and green product initiatives, such as the reduction of waste and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as new programs which provide opportunities for customers to go green. Two notable takeaways provided by Grand & Toy: “In 2015, Grand & Toy launched a revolutionary green products classification program, assigning products a light, mid or dark green shade depending on their environmental attributes. The company created a dedicated ‘Go Green’ page to allow customers to search green products more effectively, as well as a ‘Greener Office’ page to encourage environmentally conscious purchasing practices. Sales of green products have increased to 24 percent of total sales, up 4 percent since 2014.” “The 2014 TerraCycle K-cup recycling pilot project was rolled out nationally in 2015 resulting in 270,000 recycled coffee capsules by Grand & Toy and its customers, a vast improvement over the 50,000 recycled in 2014. Also, other Zero Waste Boxes were introduced to help customers recycle the ‘unrecyclable’ including office supplies, personal protective equipment and computer accessories.” There’s also a new-ish volunteer program called Pause and Affect that grants Grand & Toy associates eight paid hours per year to participate in volunteer activities, such as tree planting and neighbourhood clean-up. From the program’s inception in May 2015 to year-end, Grand & Toy employees contributed 577 hours of volunteering across Canada, a number the company hopes to grow moving forward. Grand & Toy also stages corporate volunteer events such as packing school supplies for underprivileged children to further engage its employees. As Grand & Toy’s sustainability manager, Serguei Tchertok is responsible both for overseeing the Corporate Sustainability Report, as well as ensuring implementation and execution of its practices across the business. He spoke with Samaritanmag about the company’s many initiatives and why being the so-called green guy makes going to work in the morning such a pleasure. If you had to describe Grand & Toy’s sustainability efforts in an elevator pitch, how would you do it? I’d say our top priorities are greener products, recycling our products and making sure our community involvement is high and our associates are engaged in our communities. If we can achieve those things above all else, we’re doing okay. This is Grand & Toy’s seventh Corporate Sustainability Report. Put that in some perspective: how common are these kinds of reports in the business world. They’re becoming more and more common with both mid- to large-size corporations. t’s a heartening trend and research seems to indicate that younger workers often ask prospective employers about their governance and altruism before accepting jobs. In 2015, we published a Thought Leadership Insights Report. We collaborated with Hamilton’s McMaster University and asked students how they felt about their future employers’ sustainability practices. We asked students if they’d refuse a job offer if a company’s sustainability practices were not great as new graduates and as mid-career professionals. Many of the students — some 13 percent — said that sustainability mattered so much they’d turn down a job even as new graduates. When imagining themselves as mid-career professionals, most said they would reject a job offer. It’s clear that if you want to attract and keep the best and brightest, you must ensure your environmental and social practices are on par. Is it fair to say the office supply industry — with its high product attrition rate — is uniquely placed to lead the charge on sustainability? Yes, and that’s why recycling is one of our top sustainability issues. We definitely need to make sure we are taking better care of our products once they go out into the world. We have take-back programs for some of our products, such as the thINK program for ink and toner cartridges. In 2014 when I started with Grand & Toy, we formed a partnership with (waste solutions company) TerraCycle Canada and we became the first retailer in Canada to offer a recycling solution for coffee capsules such as K-cups. We launched that program nationally in 2015 and we added other recycling options for so-called unrecyclable products such as personal protective equipment, office supplies and even candy wrappers. Apart from its environmental impact and ability to attract talent, where else do you gauge the impact of these sustainability measures? Our top sustainability issue is green products so we want to be sure our product offering is expanded. And we want to move our customers towards environmentally friendly purchasing. If we can do that, it’ll eclipse anything we do internally as a corporation because the impact of buying recyclable products — or products with other meaningful environmental attributes — is huge. In some cases, that’s very measurable, as with paper where we can present people with life-cycle analysis of how much water, trees and energy has been saved. These numbers are quite impressive and they really add up.  

The leading producers of non-reusable coffee pods are trying to make a dent in the amount of waste flowing into Canadian landfills.   The tricky part is that single-serve pods made by Keurig and Nespresso aren’t easily recycled. Add to that, 40 per cent of Canadians say they have a pod-based coffee machine in their home, according to market researchers NPD Group.   Keurig pods are made of mixed materials — a plastic cup, paper filter, foil top and coffee grounds — and require effort to separate and recycle. Nespresso pods are mainly recyclable aluminum, which must be cleared of grounds.   Keurig coffee pods are now being burned for energy at the Covanta waste-to-energy facility in Burnaby after the closing of the LaFarge cement plant in Kamloops last year.   The LaFarge plant had been taking about 1.4 million plastic Keurig pods recovered each year by Van Houtte Coffee Services and turning them to ash, an ingredient in cement. But that all came to an end late in 2016 when LaFarge permanently shuttered the cement operation.   Pods from Van Houtte are processed by a partner company, Revolution, where the grounds are removed from the cups and used for certified organic compost, according to a Keurig spokesperson.   The plastic cups are incinerated by Covanta to produce electricity and heat.   Brianne Theberge, a resident of Coquitlam, is one of 5,840 Canadians who collect pods for recycling through the Nespresso Capsule Recycling Program.   “I collect Nespresso pods from our family and three other families in my neighbourhood,” she said. “We always felt bad using disposable capsules. It’s a one-time thing and then you throw it out and you feel bad about it. The problem is that we don’t drink enough coffee to make a whole pot.”   The pods are left intact and picked up by a courier each month and sent to TerraCycle Canada, a company that specializes in difficult-to-recycle packaging.   “We had been Nespresso users for years and then I got a letter in the mail from Nespresso about the recycling program,” she said. I thought, ‘It looks pretty easy, so I’m going to sign up.’ ”   Theberge collects pods — grounds included — from three of her neighbours, who deposit them on her porch once a month. She has collected more than 3,000 capsules for the program, which has diverted 9,659,604 capsules in Canada, according to Veronica Rajadnya of TerraCycle.   According to TerraCycle, plastics are washed, shredded and pelletized for use in manufacturing while the metals are smelted for reuse. Residual coffee is composted.   All single-use pods are accepted for recycling in British Columbia if the consumer first removes and disposes of the foil top and coffee grounds, according to Multi-Material B.C.   Reliable figures are hard to find, but Keurig confirms selling 57 billion pods worldwide to date. 

PUR Water Filtration Pitchers and Faucet Filtration Systems, from Helen of Troy Health and Home, officially launches on World Water Day (March 22, 2017) at an event featuring Dr. David Suzuki as guest of honour and keynote speaker. Dr. David Suzuki will address the individual responsibility each Canadian has to the environment, and more specifically water quality. Mr. Michael Mitchell from PUR, will discuss the next generation of water filtration systems certified to remove 99% of lead, and more specifically, MAXION^® Filter Technology – PUR’s unique formulation approach for blending carbon and ion exchange materials for maximum contaminant reduction. TerraCycle will officially launch and discuss its corporate and environmental responsibility partnership with PUR.

PUR Water Filtration Pitchers and Faucet Filtration Systems, from Helen of Troy Health and Home, officially launches on World Water Day (March 22, 2017) at an event featuring Dr. David Suzuki as guest of honour and keynote speaker. Dr. David Suzuki will address the individual responsibility each Canadian has to the environment, and more specifically water quality. Mr. Michael Mitchell from PUR, will discuss the next generation of water filtration systems certified to remove 99% of lead, and more specifically, MAXION^® Filter Technology – PUR’s unique formulation approach for blending carbon and ion exchange materials for maximum contaminant reduction. TerraCycle will officially launch and discuss its corporate and environmental responsibility partnership with PUR.

WOODSTOCK - The OLG Slots and Raceway in Woodstock has teamed up with TerraCycle to keep cigarette butts out of the landfill. They have joined TerraCycle's province-wide Waste Recycling Program. How it works is the racetrack collects their cigarette butts and ships them to TerraCycle free of charge to be recycled. Once a business signs up for the program you will earn points that can be redeemed for cash donations to the non-profit charity of your choice. Province-wide donations from this program have just surpassed $29,000. Director of Policy and Social Responsibilities at OLG Catherine Jarmain says this was an easy decision for them to join this program. “OLG has been a proud participant of TerraCycle’s Cigarette Waste Recycling Program since 2012. During this time, our site-led recycling programs have contributed to OLG’s environmental footprint reduction and have generated funds that sites then donate to local charities. Last year, OLG sites hosted a total of 14 TerraCycle waste recycling programs which collected 885 kilos of previously non-recyclable waste and raised over $1,900 for local charities. It’s gratifying to know that through one initiative we are improving the environment and, at the same time, helping those in the community who depend on local charities for important services.” TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky explains why they started this program. “Every year, billions of cigarette butts end up in dumpsters and landfills, or get tossed as litter on shorelines, parks, and sidewalks across Canada. We have a big ‘thank you’ for the more than two thousand locations that have helped us collect 73 million cigarette butts through this recycling program.”

Taking a bad habit and making something good come from it. That was the idea DYNA-MIG quality and environmental and systems specialist Angela Blum had when she suggested the Stratford automotive components manufacturer begin participating in TerraCycle’s Cigarette Waste Recycling program back in 2012. “I got the idea from an environmental news blitz, and I read through it and I thought this looks pretty good because we want to reduce waste. Cigarette butts are plastic, so the stuff that isn’t smoked goes into compost, but the actual butt, the filter, is plastic. So (TerraCycle) makes plastic pallets and tote bags out of it,” Blum said. TerraCycle is an international recycling company that finds innovative solutions for materials not typically accepted at municipal recycling facilities. The company repurposes the waste collected through programs like its Cigarette Waste Recycling program into sustainable and affordable materials and consumer products. In 21 countries around the world, the waste is collected by individual collectors, consumer product companies, manufacturers, municipalities and small businesses through programs that, in return, donate money to a collector’s chosen school or charity. Since 2013, when the DYNA-MIG facility in Stratford fully implemented the program, employees have sent almost 600,000 cigarette butts – about 500 pounds of material -- off to Toronto to be recycled at no cost to the company. Since TerraCycle pays for the shipping, those in charge of orchestrating DYNA-MIG’s participation in the program need only print off the shipping labels and call UPS to come pick up the boxes. “At our smoking shelter that’s outside, we have 12 collection stations where employees put their cigarettes and the butts and everything goes in there. Then they’re collected in the pales. They have to be stirred for seven days to make sure there’s no embers – if you put a hot butt in a box that goes into a UPS truck, that could end poorly,” Blum said. “We have an outside shelter where these buckets and butts go and they get stirred. We have two facility associates in charge of collecting and monitoring them. Basically we collect enough that in two months we send three or four, sometime five boxes of them off.” For every cigarette butt DYNA-MIG ships off to be recycled, the company receives a certain number of points through the TerraCycle cigarette butt program. When exchanged, those points equate to one one-hundredth of a cent for every cigarette butt collected, all of which is earmarked for a charity of the company’s choice. So far, DYNA-MIG’s efforts have raised $454, $230 of which was used to build 92 bee homes in an area of Toronto known as Evergreen Brickworks. Evergreen is a national charity that makes cities more liveable by helping Canadians create and sustain dynamic outdoor spaces in schools, communities and homes. “TerraCycle had a bunch of suggestions in a news bulletin and I was reading through it and thought Evergreen’s Bee Program looked pretty good. I presented it to our green team that we have here and said I would like us to use our points for this because the bee disease that’s been going around (colony collapse disorder) is a big problem. If they can’t pollinate from flower to flower, from tree to tree, we’re going to lose our fruits and vegetables,” Blum said, adding that apiarists working with Evergreen monitor the bee homes built in Toronto to try and understand what causes colony collapse disorder, while also maintaining the ability to isolate any hives that come down with the disease to prevent it from spreading. After only a year of participation in TerraCycle’s Cigarette Butt Waste Recycling program, DYNA-MIG was presented with a Good Idea Award for its efforts at its parent company, F-Tech Inc.’s 2014 environmental conference in Japan. Because of its success in Stratford, F-Tech is now looking at implementing the program at each of DYNA-MIG’s sister companies worldwide. For more information on how to reduce local landfill waste through TerraCycle’s recycling programs, visit www.terracycle.ca.

The Downtown Barrie BIA is set to ramp up the war on butts. Managing Director Craig Stevens says the Association is looking to buy more than a dozen cigarette receptacles in a bid to keep downtown streets clean of butts. Coun. Doug Shipley added $2,500 for cigarette receptacles in the downtown as part of the 2017 budget. Council's move was in response to complaints about overflowing ashtrays and cigarette butts along Dunlop St. During the budget debatrs, Mayor Jeff Lehman said the city has to have a higher standard of cleanliness in the city core and along the waterfront, as he argued on spending $32,800 on increased maintenance. “We did receive a significant number of complaints this year. With the popularity of our core area and waterfront comes more litter and more mess. As we open the new Centennial Park and the new Meridian Square, we will see the problems getting worse,” Lehman said last month. In May, the annual Butt Blitz event led by A Greener Future has a 2017 goal to pick up 200,000 butts nationally. Barrie's 2016 contribution was 7,475 and organizers are targeting 10,000 this year. ZuZu Fashion Boutique owner Tracey Baker is  Downtown Volunteer Coordinator for the Blitz and has already erected a cigarette receptacle outside of her Dunlop St. East shop. The Butt Blitz is an open event that anyone in Canada can join. Participants can either attend a local cleanup where coordinators are running the event, or participants can collect butts on their own and drop them off to the coordinator afterwards. The goal of the event is to remove as much cigarette butt litter from ecosystems across Canada as possible during a one day Butt Blitz event and send the butts to TerraCycle Canada for recycling. Organizers also hope to raise awareness of the negative impacts that cigarette butt litter has on ecosystems and health.