Meijer and Clorox Co.'s Brita recently concluded a contest awarding a garden to a Midwestern school. The “Brita Meijer Recycled Garden Program" awards a Midwestern school with three recycled garden beds, two picnic tables, three benches and a trash receptacle. The bundle of garden supplies was made from recycled waste collected through the Brita Recycling Program, a free, national program operated by Brita and recycling company TerraCycle. Schools enlisted students and other constituents to visit a promotional page within TerraCycle's website to vote on their respective school. The prize goes to the school that earned the most votes from March 15 to July 15. The winner will be notified by Aug. 15. In stores, a half-pallet display plugged the contest, directing shoppers to meijer.com/brita for more details. The display also communicated that each Brita water filter could replace about 300 water bottles, reducing plastic waste. A July 6 Facebook update from TerraCycle also supported.    

Not a week goes by when we don’t see trash dropped on a sidewalk, street, parking lot, along highways … by people who have not regard for our environment. Slobs, we call you. What else do you call someone who is so lazy they simply throw their trash onto the ground out in the open? Oh, there’s another word: criminal. Whether littering or illegally dumping garbage, it is against the law in Pennsylvania, and violators can be prosecuted by a number of different state agencies. OK, let’s transition from that rant, but on a related subject. Over 500 million pieces of litter were found along state roadways in 2019, according to Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful, a non-profit organization that since 1990 has been devoted to keeping communities in all of the state’s 67 counties clean and beautiful. Of the total estimated litter, 186.2 million or 37.1 percent were cigarette butts. Enter the Cigarette Litter Prevention Program, created by the larger Keep America Beautiful organization in 2002. It is the nation’s largest program aimed at eliminating cigarette butt and cigar tip litter. The program provided the state organization with a $20,000 grant this past year. Collaborating with the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the group was able to reduce the number of cigarette butts left behind in 10 state parks in 2020 by 42 percent. To date, Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful has implemented the Cigarette Litter Prevention Program in 35 of the 121 state parks with an overall, combined reduction rate of 67 percent. They did this by installing ash receptacles at points of entry and providing portable ashtrays to smokers using the parks. This program is not just reducing litter. The group is partnering with Terracycle to recycle cigarette refuse by shipping cigarette collections to the company. There, the materials that make up a cigarette are separated. The filters are melted into hard plastic to make new recycled industrial products, such as plastic pallets, and residual tobacco and paper are separated and composted. Cigarette butts may contaminate soil and ground water with chemicals and heavy metals; fatally impact birds, animals and marine life who often mistake them for food; and the filters, made of cellulose acetate, never fully disappear from the environment, according to Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful. It seems like a very small piece of debris to get so much attention. Left unchecked, it adds up. That said, we tip our hats to this program. And smokers, we ask that you dispose of your butts in a proper receptacle and not on the ground. As the group’s name says, do your part to Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful!

  GALVESTON, Texas — Two local nonprofits have banded together to tackle an immense pollution problem in Galveston: cigarette butts. Turtle Island Restoration Network (TIRN) and Surfrider Foundation’s Galveston Chapter are working to reduce the enormous number of discarded cigarette butts on the island’s beaches, streets, and sidewalks by installing at least 50 butt cans as part of the “Hold On To Your Butt” (HOTYB) program. The groups joined forces to expand the program thanks to a generous grant from Keep Galveston Beautiful. The program will collect the butt litter at a number of locations on the seawall, downtown, in parks, and on fishing piers throughout Galveston Island. The program will also launch a recycling program, create a public education and outreach program, and engage volunteers in citizen science — volunteers will collect data and send the butts to be recycled by TerraCycle. Cigarette butt litter is the most common form of litter found in beach cleanups and the filters in the butts are made from plastic. This litter is unsightly and is dangerous to marine life; birds and fish accidentally ingest it thinking it is food and the hazardous chemicals from one butt contaminates two gallons of seawater, making it lethal to small marine life like crustaceans. Unfortunately, cigarette butts have become an almost socially acceptable form of litter. “Galveston is an island, any litter that goes on the ground whether on the beaches, sidewalks downtown, or neighborhood streets will be washed into the storm drains when it rains, and eventually end up in the bay and ocean,” said Kimber De Salvo Anderson of Turtle Island Restoration Network. “Through community science and expanding the HOTYB monitoring program, we can assess the extent of Galveston’s cigarette butt pollution problem, bring public awareness to it, and educate the public on how to combat it.” In 2017, TIRN initiated their Cigarette Butt-ler program by installing 18 cans at popular fishing piers on Galveston, Galveston Island Fishing Pier, 61st Street Pier and Seawolf Park, to help encourage community members to properly dispose of their butt litter. In 2020, Galveston Surfrider launched their HOTYB program to educate visitors and residents about the dangers of cigarette butt litter to the environment and to provide receptacles for the disposal of that litter.  In just half of a year, HOTYB collected more than 5,000 butts from the first few cans installed in August 2020. “Providing cigarette butt cans is a way to make it easy for folks to do the right thing, but probably the most important part of the program is just making people aware. Cigarette butts are plastic, they’re toxic, they take forever to decompose, and they’re ugly. Everybody benefits if you HOLD ON TO YOUR BUTT,” said Rob Glover of Galveston Surfrider. If you want to make a difference on the island by reducing butt waste, contact hotyb@galveston.surfrider.org to volunteer. Turtle Island Restoration Network is a nonprofit organization that works to protect and restore populations of endangered sea turtles and marine biodiversity on the Texas coast and throughout the Gulf of Mexico. www.seaturtles.org/gulf The Surfrider Foundation is dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world’s ocean, waves and beaches, for all people, through a powerful activist network.  galveston.surfrider.org

SalonCentric and international recycling leader TerraCycle have just introduced SalonCycle, a program that's designed to close the gap in haircare waste and provide salon professionals with environmentally friendly options for their hard-to-recycle product packaging.   “Unless you’re a salon owner or independent stylist, you may not think about the waste that is generated from a full day of haircuts and coloring," said Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of TerraCycle. "A busy day can result in bags of non-recyclable garbage that get put in a dumpster or set by the curb to be taken to the local landfill."   Effective immediately, SalonCycle will allow stylists, salon suites and salons across the nation (contiguous 48 states) to recycle a number of different waste streams commonly found in salons, including:  

• Metals - Used color tubes and foils
• Plastics - Product lids and containers, rigid plastics, beverage bottles and color tube lids
• Paper - Magazines, newspapers, paper packaging, cardboard and coffee cups
• Hair - Human hair (processed and virgin)
• Breakroom Waste - Coffee capsules, straws, chip bags, candy wrappers and disinfecting wipes
• PPE - Disposable gloves, face masks and disposable garments
• Excess Color - Color, toner and lightener

  How it works:  

• Order - Salons and stylists orders boxes which are shipped directly to their salon.
• Collect - SalonCycle boxes are placed in designated high-traffic areas throughout the salon to easily collect the various categories of salon products and packaging
• Ship - Once full, the salon sends their box to TerraCycle via UPS
• Recycle - The salon products and packaging are saved from landfills and recycled by TerraCycle

Did you know cigarette butts are not fully biodegradable? But there’s a solution: TerraCycle, the company that strives to find a way to recycle everything, offers a free Cigarette Waste Recycling Program. Just sign up with TerraCycle, collect the waste, and ship it to them for recycling.   When tossed on the street, the beach, or wherever they fall, cigarette butts take 18 months to 10 years to break down. Discarded butts leach chemicals and heavy metals, the same things that kill smokers, into the environment. They often wash down the street gutters, polluting our waterways and harming fish and other wildlife. Recycling cigarette butts is an important way to clean up after ourselves. It is good for the neighborhood or beach, and good for the planet.   Are you a smoker, or do you live or work with smokers? Or perhaps you’re one of our heroes who pick up cigarette butts from the beaches, parks, or neighborhood streets. Whatever your relationship with cigarettes, TerraCycle’s program is good news for those concerned with the waste they create.  

What TerraCycle Accepts

  The TerraCycle Cigarette Waste Recycling Program accepts extinguished cigarettes, cigarette filters, loose tobacco pouches, outer plastic packaging, inner foil packaging, rolling paper, and ash. To ensure proper recycling, don’t send any other waste with these materials. If you have paperboard packaging, recycle it through your local recycling program.   The service is free but you must provide your own containers. If you are a business or just want a convenient solution for packaging and shipping cigarette waste, TerraCycle also offers a variety of cigarette Zero Waste containers that include pre-paid shipping labels.   Do you have a business or community location where you’d like to collect butts? You can purchase fire-safe aluminum cigarette waste receptacles to install in high-traffic areas.    

Tips for Successful Recycling

  Make sure cigarettes are fully extinguished before you collect them.   Store the waste in a re-sealable plastic bag, disposable plastic container, plastic shopping bag, or garbage bag.   When ready to ship, secure the containers to seal in the odor and ash. Take the time to package carefully because it suppresses the odor for you and the people who handle it in transit.   Download a shipping label from TerraCycle, place your full containers in a sturdy box, and ship it to TerraCycle.  

How Are Cigarettes Recycled?

  With funding from Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company, the cigarette waste that you collect gets recycled into a variety of industrial products, such as plastic pallets. Check out this infographic from TerraCycle that explains the process.     Learn more about the Cigarette Waste Recycling Program, or explore other free TerraCycle Recycling Programs.  

By Kai Burkhardt Updated 2:20 PM EDT, Mon June 14, 2021 CNN —  If you’re trying to live a more sustainable life, finding truly useful eco-friendly swaps can be harder than you think. That’s why when we discover genuinely great and useful eco-friendly products like Swedish dishcloths, we become obsessed. Well, there’s good news, because we’ve found another sustainable swap that we just can’t shut up about: Stasher bags.   Stasher makes a lot of claims about what these little wonder bags can do, so we got a handful of our own in various sizes to try them out. We packed them, washed them, microwaved them, froze them and boiled them to see if they really stack up. After it all, we can definitely say we’re never going to buy another Ziploc bag ever again.  

What are Stasher bags?

Stasher bags are reusable bags made out of platinum-grade silicone, which is the highest quality of silicone. The bags are free of BPA, BPS and other phthalates, and they meet FDA and EU requirements for food contact and safety. This means that not only can you use Stasher bags to bring your lunch to work or store leftovers in the fridge, you can put them in the freezer, microwave, oven and even in boiling water without any worry of plastic or chemicals leaking into your food.   The possibilities with Stasher bags are seriously endless. You can freeze leftovers, pop popcorn in the microwave, reheat leftovers in the oven and even sous vide a perfect steak. They’re safer, more versatile and just plain better than a traditional plastic bag.   Stasher bags come in tons of different sizes and dozens of colors to fit all of your kitchen and storage needs. At Amazon, you can shop between the sandwich, snack, half-gallon and medium stand-up sizes, and on Stasher’s site there are additional options, including large and small stand-up sizes, a carabiner-equipped go bag and a tiny pocket bag. Plus, there’s a large list of bundles you can grab to start your Stasher collection. We’ve had several sandwich Stasher bags for over a year and use them constantly, whether we’re packing lunch for a hike or storing leftover chili in the freezer. They’ve held up perfectly, and we’ve never noticed any weird taste from storing food in the bag.   We recently got our hands on a few more sizes, including the medium and large stand-ups, the half-gallon bag and the snack bag to see if they’re as good as the original. We’ve honestly been amazed at how the different sizes of Stashers open up a whole new world of food storage and cooking possibilities. The medium and large stand-up bags are now our favorite way to make popcorn for movie nights because after making the popcorn right in the Stasher, its flat bottom makes it easy to keep the bag right next to us on the couch. The snack bag is perfect for a small amount of veggies, nuts or fruit or that little bit of chopped onion you didn’t end up putting in the pan. The half-gallon has been amazing to store any large leftovers, and we can’t wait to try to sous vide with it.   The Stasher bags feature an easy, pinch-close seal that’s airtight to keep any food or leftovers fresh. We’ve never experienced any spillage or leaking with our Stasher bags, but to double check, we filled the half-gallon bag with water and turned it upside down, shook it and squeezed it, and not a single drop came out (while doing this we realized you could fill it with hot water to use as a heating pad or freeze it to use it as an ice pack!). Stasher bags are a little pricey upfront — the standard sandwich bag goes for $11.99 each — but they’ll last for years to come, replacing who knows how many boxes of plastic bags. And, if you accidentally poke a hole in them or they reach the end of their life, you can send them back to Stasher where they’ll be recycled through TerraCycle.   Even if Stasher bags only had the single sandwich size, we’d still recommend them as a great way to reduce your single-use plastic waste. However, thanks to Stasher’s wide variety of shapes and sizes, they’re so much more than a plastic bag replacement. They fulfill so many different needs and are truly an amazingly versatile tool you need in your kitchen.

Updated Jul 12, 2021; Posted Jul 12, 2021   By Linda Hasco | lhasco@pennlive.com   There’s no denying that single-use plastics are a huge contributor to the world’s plastic pollution problem. So, if your goal is to do your part and live a more sustainable life, you may be looking for useful eco-friendly alternatives, and that may present a challenge. According to CNN Underscored, there is good news. They’ve discovered an eco-friendly swap that they “can’t shut up about.” The sustainable product they’re in love with is Stasher bags.   What are Stasher bags? Stasher bags are reusable bags made out of the highest quality silicone called platinum-grade. They are also free of BPA, BPS, and other phthalates. Stasher bags meet “FDA and EU requirements for food contact and safety.” This means you never need to worry about plastic or chemicals leaking into your food, whether you use Stasher bags to carry your lunch, store leftovers in the fridge or freezer, or use them to prepare or reheat food in the microwave, oven, and even in boiling water, the report explained.   The possibilities with Stasher bags are amazingly endless. The news outlet said, “they’re safer, more versatile,” and simply “better than a traditional plastic bag.”   No matter what your kitchen or storage needs require, there are many different sizes and colors to choose from. CNN Underscored noted the sandwich, snack, half-gallon, and medium stand-up sizes can be found at Amazon, with additional options including large and small stand-up sizes, a carabiner-equipped go bag, and a tiny pocket bag on Stasher’s site. Plus, there’s a large list of bundles, which offer savings that can be purchased to start your Stasher collection.   Do Stasher bags last and are they safe? Several sandwich Stasher bags that have been used constantly for more than a year have held up perfectly, whether used for packing lunch or storing leftover chili in the freezer, with no weird taste from storing food in the bag. The report also touted the versatility of the various sizes, noting that they “open up a whole new world of food storage and cooking possibilities.”   A pinch-close airtight seal keeps food or leftovers fresh, and the news outlet said it never experienced any spillage or leaking with its Stasher bags. A half-gallon bag was filled with water and turned upside down. It’s shaken and squeezed, but “not a single drop came out.” The experiment proved when filled with hot water it could be used as a heating pad or when frozen, used as an ice pack.   According to the Stasher bag website — they can safely be microwaved, baked in the oven up to 400 degrees, placed in your dishwasher for easy cleaning, and safely used to sous vide.   What do Stasher bags cost? CNN said the initial investment for Stasher bags is a bit “pricey” — “the standard sandwich bag goes for $11.99 each” — but consider that they’ll last for years and replace “who knows how many boxes of plastic bags.” And, you also have the satisfaction of knowing that if you accidentally poke a hole in them or they reach the end of their life, they won’t end up in a landfill or the ocean — you can send them back to Stasher where they’ll be recycled through TerraCycle.   It’s so much more than a plastic bag replacement. Even if Stasher bags only had the single sandwich size, CNN Underscored said the product would still get its recommendation as a great way to reduce your single-use plastic waste. However, the wide variety of shapes and sizes allows it to fulfill so many different needs that it’s an amazingly versatile tool in your kitchen — “so much more than a plastic bag replacement.”