Did you know that storm sewers lead directly to local waterways? Now, visualize what happens during a storm every time you walk past a littered storm sewer. According to the Ocean Conservancy, cigarette litter is the number one item found during marine clean ups.  In fact, estimates suggest that globally, “1.69 BILLION pounds of butts wind up as toxic trash each year”  equating to as many as “4.95 trillion” butts. Certainly at a local level, cigarette litter is unsightly and a nuisance, but it also poses an environmental threat. Likely due to fire risk, the natural inclination is to drop a cigarette button the ground and step on it to extinguish or to put it out in the sand at the beach. However, the cost to hire someone to pick up all those butts can be significant, and the bill goes to all of us. With a lifespan of about 25 years before a cigarette butt is fully decomposed–incorrectly disposed of cigarette butts can cause a lot of damage — to wildlife, fish, your dog, or even small children. They can also be a fire hazard. Besides, who wants toxic waste (benzene, heavy metals, nicotine) in the water we swim, boat and fish in? The Butt Blitz is a high impact, one-day opportunity to get out and make a difference. Last year in Barrie, a handful of volunteers collected 7,475 butts— we can definitely do better in 2017, especially with the support and participation of downtown Barrie businesses. Long term, the most effective way to attack the problem is to stop the butt drop at the source. There are ways to recycle discarded cigarette butts and that’s where the Terracycle Cigarette Recycling Container comes in. The process is as follows: buy it, install it, use it, empty it and send contents for recycling. No butts on the ground. Downtown Barrie’s ZuZu Fashion Boutique has the first one on the block and it’s getting traction, but it’s only one and we need more to really impact the issue. Read more about ZuZu’s Butt Collector here, and learn more about Terracycle campaigns in other Canadian cities here. Contact ZuZu shop owner Tracey Baker at zuzu@zuzufashionboutique.com for more details. Litter collected both through the ZuZu Terracycle container, and during the Butt Blitz is composted, and recycled into plastic. Now with Barrie downtown businesses –and hopefully others–on board, 2017 should be the biggest Butt Blitz yet!

PROVINCETOWN — Cigarette butts will soon be transformed into pallets, railroad ties or industrial grade mulch now that the board of selectmen has accepted grant money that will allow the town's recycling and renewable energy committee to purchase Sidewalk Buttlers that will be placed in high traffic areas throughout town. In a letter presented to the selectmen on Monday, the recycling committee said that the self-contained receptacles would "reduce or eliminate the substantial presence of cigarette butt litter along the sidewalks and streets and [will] prevent cigarette butts from entering Provincetown Harbor." The Sidewalk Buttler is a rectangular shoulder-height receptacle topped by a hole in which smokers can deposit their butts. In their letter to the selectmen, committee members wrote that the Buttlers are easy to mount and detach for cleaning and can be placed on town-owned property such as signs, poles and fences. Each one holds approximately 700 butts and is weatherproof, fireproof and rustproof. Dept. of public works staff will install the receptacles at parking lots, beach access points and municipal restrooms. Each unit costs $100. The selectmen unanimously (minus Erik Yingling, who wasn't present) approved the committee's request to accept grants from CARE Cape & Islands for $1,485 and a pending grant from Keep America Beautiful for $2,500, which will fund the purchase and installation of the Sidewalk Buttlers. "Cigarette butts annually feature on the Center for Coastal Studies top 10 list of debris collected during beach cleanups at Long Point and Herring Cove," said committee member Laura Ludwig in an email addressed to Jill Taladay from CARE Cape & Islands on Jan. 5. "They do not biodegrade and they are difficult to recycle unless collected in a clean manner and in large volume. They have been implicated in the death or injury of marine animals and birds and they are a blight on the natural environment." Ludwig also said, after speaking with Town Hall custodians, that the current receptacles in place are not sufficient. "Streets, sidewalks and storm drains are littered on a daily basis with tossed butts," she said. "The Town Hall custodian reports that she weekly picks up thousands of butts off a small town lawn during the summer, a problem exacerbated by leaf blowers, street sweeper trucks and pedestrian smokers." The receptacles will be purchased through the Sidewalk Buttler Company based in Portland, Maine. Each receptacle contains a radio frequency chip that allows the town to verify the date and time of collections and keep track of the total number of butts in each unit through an Android mobile application, which allows collectors to measure the effectiveness of each unit. "In Portland, the Sidewalk Buttler Company collected, tracked and recycled more than 1 million cigarette butts in 2016 alone," company founder and director Michael Roylos said in materials that were included in the selectmen's packet. Discarded butts would be collected and emptied by volunteers and shipped to a New Jersey-based company called Terra Cycle, where they will be made into pallets, railroad ties or industrial grade mulch. The United Parcel Service will ship them from Provincetown to New Jersey for free. The committee hopes to organize a "butt brigade" of volunteers to empty receptacles when necessary, working with other town committees and organizations. Prior to the purchase and installation of the receptacles, the recycling and renewable energy committee will hold a public hearing so that residents will have a chance to learn more about the Buttlers and the collection and recycling process. The date of the hearing has not yet been announced.

Have you heard the news? Terracycle®, an international recycling company that turns waste into plastics that can be used for products such as park benches, recycling bins, a playgrounds has teamed up with Entenmann’s® Little Bites® to help eliminate waste and give you an opportunity to earn money for your school or favorite charity. My kids love Entenmann’s® Little Bites® so I can honestly say that we tend to always have an abundance of pouches laying around our house. Instead of throwing them in the trash, we’ve decided to gather them all up and send them in using a pre-paid shipping label from TerraCycle®. I always encourage recycling in our home, so why not take the extra step to mail in our Entenmann’s® Little Bites® pouches? The great thing about this recycling program is that it’s open to any individual, school or organization interested in reducing local landfill waste.

I have a teenager and a pre-teen who have recently taken up a love of cooking.  They would spend every waking moment in the kitchen baking and trying new recipes if I would let them.  We are very busy though, so we love being able to find recipes that taste great but are easy to make.  One of our favorite recipes to make is the Fruit and Brownie Kabobs with Cream Cheese Dip.  This is a great recipe because you can make a personal serving using just one Entenmann’s Little Bites pack, or you can make enough for all your guests at a party.  This recipe is fast to make and tastes delicious! Entenmann’s Little Bites Pouch Make Pledge Program with TerraCycle TerraCycle, an international recycling company turns waste into plastic that can be used for products such as park benches, recycling bins and playgrounds.  After you make your kabobs, through the free recycling program, you can ship your Entenmann’s Little Bites pouches to TerraCycle for processing using a pre-paid shipping label. It is easy to participate in this program.  Through March, you can make the pledge, send in the waste, and have the opportunity to earn rewards.  The Entenmann’s Little Bites Pouch Recycling Program is open to any individual, school or organization interested in reducing local landfill waste. To learn more about the Entenmann’s Little BitesPouch Recycling Program here:http://www.terracycle.com/en-US/contests/little-bites-pledge

Did you know that, according to the Ocean Conservancy,  cigarette litter is not only the #1 item found during marine clean ups, but it is also the 4th deadliest ocean trash after fishing gear, plastic bags/cutlery and balloons? In fact, estimates suggest that globally, “1.69 BILLION pounds of butts wind up as toxic trash each year”  equating to as many as “4.95 trillion” butts. Certainly at a local level, cigarette litter is unsightly and a nuisance, but it also poses environmental problems as our storm sewers lead directly to local waterways.  Visualize what happens during a storm every time you walk past a littered storm sewer. We at ZuZu want to play a part in reducing cigarette litter in our downtown Barrie streets, one butt at a time. Our Terracycle Butt Collection receptacle is up and ready to receive. It’s already in use and we are encouraging smokers from near and far to place their cigarette litter in it as you pass by. But it’s only one and we need more available to make it easier and convenient to butt out. So we’re asking other business and property owners to invest a small amount and buy one ($100), mount it and let smokers know that we care about our downtown streets. It’s up to all of us to make a difference for our beautiful downtown.

Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, I was catching up with some colleagues at TerraCycle HQ in Trenton. The conversation turned to then President-elect Donald J. Trump. The topic was centered on the question of how the new administration would affect environmental policy and global action plans for sustainability. More specifically, how would a Trump presidency affect TerraCycle?   Given the environmental platform that the current president campaigned on last year, it was clear that, if elected, a President Trump would significantly alter the direction taken by the previous Administration. One pre-election promise was the cancellation or renegotiation of the United States’ participation in the Paris Agreement, a global climate change deal hinging on increased regulations for the reduction of carbon emissions. Another was the eradication of the Clean Power Plan, which regulates emissions from power plants.   In less than a month since President Trump took office, there have been reports of EPA employees being banned from giving social media updates, speaking with press and interacting with Congress and public amid the grants and contracts freeze. Actions taken with regards to advancing the Dakota Access and Keystone Pipelines by executive ordersignal the possibility of expanded support for U.S. dependence on fossil fuels for domestic energy production.   That TerraCycle is an environmentally-minded company on a mission to move away from the linear ‘take-make-dispose’ way of doing things in favor of more circular and/or sustainable production systems, might question how TerraCycle would operate under the new direction favored by this Administration.   So will a Trump presidency negatively affect TerraCycle? The deep irony is that the answer is ‘No.’   The services TerraCycle offers are built to circumvent and address the economic and structural limitations of currently inefficient public waste management systems. As it stands in the U.S. and most countries around the world, public works sees most “waste” outputs falling outside the scope of recyclability (aka resource recovery), tracking them for landfilling or incineration. This is because the value of most items cannot be sold on back-end channels for more than the cost of collection, logistics and processing in these publicly funded systems, providing no economic incentive to recycle them because of the lack of profit.   However, a report from the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation finds that since most plastic packaging is used only once, 95 percent of the value of plastic packaging material, worth $80-120 billion annually, is lost to the economy. The current value system may not view recycling as a profitable business, but the fact is, not recycling is wasting money.   Diverting potentially valuable resources from being lost to the economy requires its own set of resources that the public system does not currently have. TerraCycle works with other companies, manufacturers and major brands to sponsor solutions for difficult-to-recycle waste streams in every country in which we operate, effectively providing the technology, the infrastructure, logistics and funding required to recover materials and feed them back into the value system.   Our stake partnership with SUEZ, the largest waste management company in Europe, is a demonstration of how TerraCycle’s expertise in making the “unrecyclable” nationally recyclable acts as a sweeping, profitable supplement to public systems. Our consumer-facing program structures are now available to SUEZ’s customers in France, the UK, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden, thereby expanding upon its services and adding value using our platforms.   While TerraCycle proves that infrastructure, not science, is the limitation preventing most of the world’s waste from being recycled, this presidency will make clear that innovation and competitiveness do not suffer, but flourish, under new conditions set forth by public administrations. Companies have the opportunity to step up their CSR initiatives despite decreased social and environmental regulations, acting as advocates and problem solvers in the face of rising expectations.   More and more, businesses are measured by their commitment to not only corporate social responsibility, but to creating social impacts. And TerraCycle, in our dedication to accelerating circular economy principles, will not only remain on track, but hopefully serve as an example for other entities in both the public and private sector.

The State of the Union: Contact Lenses   PRESERVING THE ENVIRONMENT     In addition to our efforts to develop new materials and bring innovative technologies to market, Bausch + Lomb also works daily to become a more environmentally sustainable company. We have employees around the globe dedicated to Bausch + Lomb’s sustainable business practices, and today even our contact lenses are playing a role. Through our One by One recycling program, we are encouraging ECPs and patients to recycle used Biotrue ONEday contact lenses, as well as other contact lenses and blister packs, in a nationwide effort to help preserve the environment by taking one action at a time to one day achieve a greener future. This unique and free program, which officially kicked off on America Recycles Day, was developed in partnership with TerraCycle, a world leader in the collection and repurposing of hard-to-recycle postconsumer waste. The program is now available to ECPs and their patients.   - See more at: http://eyetubeod.com/2017/02/the-state-of-the-union-contact-lenses/#sthash.aefokQaq.dpuf

Many eco-friendly products that are allowing your company to become more environmentally responsible. Most business owners are often too busy to think about their impact on the environment. However, everyone’s actions will cause a reaction on Earth. For example, the environmental impact of business costs the global economy $4.7 trillion each year. It honestly doesn’t take much to become more environmentally responsible. Is a fact, the following eco-friendly products have been created for easy integration in the workplace. E-Waste Trash Can Start depositing your e-waste in a trash can created from e-waste such as crushed fax machines and computers. In addition to the TerraCycle E-Waste Trash Can utilizing recycled materials that would have ordinarily clogged up landfills. The trash can directly help organizations to reduce their carbon footprint. As they can hold up to 28 quarts. So, instead of throwing old computer monitors, laptops, copiers or hard drives straight into the bin. We could dispose of them in a trash can that is the personification of eco-responsible behavior.

Each season, the kids enroll in some sort of sports program. They play soccer in the Fall, basketball in Winter and Baseball in Spring. Parents take turns bringing drinks and snacks for the kids on game days, and on one particular day my kids were each handed Entenmann’s® Little Bites®. That was the day their obsession with these delicious treats began. We can’t seem to keep them around long after they’re purchased and they’re a great grab and go snack. One of very few that my picky eater enjoys.   TerraCycle® is an international recycling company turns waste into plastic that can be used for products such as park benches, recycling bins and playgrounds. Through the free recycling program, you can collect waste, like Entenmann’s® Little Bites® pouches, and ship to TerraCycle® for processing using a pre-paid shipping label. Another reason to love our Little Bites! Make good use of the boxes that contain the pouched and make this cool DIY. What’s more, now through March TerraCycle® and Entenmann’s® Little Bites® want to reward you for making eco-friendly habits by Making the Pledge. If you collect Entenmann’s® Little Bites® pouches on behalf of a K-12 school, you have a chance to be placed in the running to win a Classroom Party!