As Earth911 recently reported, cigarettes can now be recycled in the U.S. thanks to a new partnership between TerraCycle, a company that finds recycling solutions for items that aren't easy to recycle, and Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. TerraCycle collects discarded cigarettes that people mail to them through their Cigarette Waste Brigade and turns the filters into industrial products such as shipping pallets and plastic lumber. This program is unique and tackles a real environmental problem, since cigarette waste can be found on most roadways and is very common at beaches. The real mystery here is how a cigarette becomes a new product like a shipping pallet. To find out, Earth911 talked with Ernie Simpson, Global VP of Research & Development for TerraCycle. How Cigarette Recycling Works To find a viable recycling solution for a huge waste stream such as cigarettes, TerraCycle had to consider processes that could handle large volumes of material. The method the company's researchers settled on can be broken down into a few main steps. "We collect the filters and sterilize them through irradiation," Simpson said. "Then we separate the tobacco from the filter and paper." To separate the parts of the cigarette, the materials are shredded. Afterward, the tobacco and paper are both composted, and TerraCycle sends the tobacco to a special composting facility that only composts tobacco products. After that, they're left with just the filters, the part of the cigarette that gets recycled into new materials. "The filter is cellulose acetate, a plastic that can be recycled with other plastic materials," Simpson explained. "We blend the cellulose acetate with other recyclable materials. Then we use those to create different items." To create the appropriate blend of plastic, TerraCycle mixes the filters with other plastic they have in house. Once mixed, the plastic is turned into pellets, which can then be molded into new products. "Creating plastic pallets for shipping made from cigarette filters is really cool," Simpson said, and it's certainly not something you see everyday. Ensuring Recycled Filters Are Safe One potential concern about this process is safety: will any contaminants make their way into the new products? "We have tested our formulations for everything from possible food contact to heavy metal contamination to nicotine contamination," Simpson explained. His team has also tested for any microbes or bacteria to ensure to products' safety. "By diluting the filters with other plastic material you dilute any other agents. The other materials have no nicotine or anything of that sort, so simply by blending [the filters and other plastic] at a certain ratio you can reduce the presence of any of those materials," Simpson said. To be on the safe side, TerraCycle never uses recycled cigarette filters in any consumer products that might come into contact with food or other consumables. All filters find their way into new industrial products. Get Involved TerraCycle hopes to collect and recycle hundreds of millions of cigarette butts through the Cigarette Waste Brigade, and the recycling process will make a significant impact when it comes to reducing waste. Creating pallets and other products out of cigarette waste instead of virgin plastic reduces both the amount of waste in landfills and the quantity of virgin materials needed to make new products. To get involved and start collecting cigarette waste, visit TerraCycle's Cigarette Waste Brigade webpage. Anyone 21 years of age or older can start collecting as an individual or part of a group. You could also find out if any anti-litter groups in your area are already collecting cigarette butts and team up with them. Setting up a collection at your workplace or a business you frequent might be another good option. Want to learn how to recycle other unusual materials? Check Out: Recycling Mystery: Toothbrushes and Toothpaste Tubes

From glue sticks to flip-flops, TerraCycle embraces hard-to-recycle waste with open arms. And with a new collection scheme, the company is taking on the country's most pervasive type of litter: Cigarette butts.

If you’re at all familiar with “waste solution development” firm TerraCycle, you’re probably well aware that the New Jersey-headquartered company largely, but not exclusively, collects difficult-to-recycle trashof the PG-rated, lunchbox-friendly variety: Plastic Lunchables trays and lids, Capri Sun drink pouches, M&M wrappers, plastic yogurt cups, string cheese packaging, and the like.

You don’t have to walk or drive very far to see that smokers often discard cigarette waste in ways that litter the environment. Our company has been committed to environmental sustainability since we were founded 30 years ago, and we’re proud to be the exclusive sponsor of an innovative program to reduce and recycle cigarette butt litter, regardless of which manufacturer made the cigarettes.

From glue sticks to flip-flops, TerraCycle embraces hard-to-recycle waste with open arms. And with a new collection scheme, the company is taking on the country's most pervasive type of litter: Cigarette butts.

If you’re at all familiar with “waste solution development” firm TerraCycle, you’re probably well aware that the New Jersey-headquartered company largely, but not exclusively, collects difficult-to-recycle trashof the PG-rated, lunchbox-friendly variety: Plastic Lunchables trays and lids, Capri Sun drink pouches, M&M wrappers, plastic yogurt cups, string cheese packaging, and the like.

You don’t have to walk or drive very far to see that smokers often discard cigarette waste in ways that litter the environment. Our company has been committed to environmental sustainability since we were founded 30 years ago, and we’re proud to be the exclusive sponsor of an innovative program to reduce and recycle cigarette butt litter, regardless of which manufacturer made the cigarettes.

SVN was started by a few visionary "dough nuts" (rich hippies), who wanted to use their wealth to make revolutionary stuff happen. It has attracted a mix of successful social entrepreneurs over the years including Ben and Jerry and Virgin's Sir Richard Branson, as well as the late Anita Roddick of The Body Shop. Increasingly there has been a surge of new members representing youth and people of color who are adding richness and capacity to this cultural phenomenon. President Obama certainly would have been welcome at the Social Venture Network's recent 25th anniversary conference, but, some of SVN's younger social entrepreneurs might have stolen some of his fire. For example, Tom Szaky of TerraCycle showed this video as part of his impressive talk. Tom has applied Princetonian cleverness with youthful enthusiasm to reinvent waste streams as product development streams globally. Can this kind of innovation be the legacy of the president's next four years?

Tom Szaky collects the most disgusting things. Yucky yogurt containers. Sticky candy wrappers. Old flip-flops. Now, he and his Trenton company, TerraCycle, are onto a new one: cigarette butts, the most common litter items on the planet. (And much, much worse items, but that comes later.) So bring 'em on. Let neither stinkiness nor sogginess nor other manner of nastiness be a barrier. Once in hand, the company will "sanitize" and sort the butts, sending the paper and tobacco to a specialty tobacco composter. The filters will be melted and re-formed into pellets, eventually to end up as two different but butt-worthy items - ashtrays and park benches. For every 1,000 butts sent in by a TerraCycle member (find out more at www.terracycle.com), a dollar will go to the national anti-littering nonprofit, Keep America Beautiful. Szaky said the new butt program "will help to promote our belief that everything can and should be recycled." It's part of his plan to "eliminate the idea of waste." Targeting butts should be easy. They're everywhere. A 2009 Keep America Beautiful study found that 65 percent of cigarette butts wind up as litter. In a quarter century of beach cleanups, volunteers for the Ocean Conservancy have picked up more than 52 million butts - the most pervasive item they find. Many beaches now limit smoking to designated areas. Campuses fed up with spending thousands of dollars picking up the things have considered bans. Still the butts come. They are more than unsightly. Peer-reviewed studies have detailed how metals leach from smoked cigarettes. And how chemicals in the butts are harmful to fish, which is relevant because many butts wind up in waterways. Even when butts are picked up - or not littered to begin with - they add to the waste stream piling up in our landfills. Keep America Beautiful has actually studied butt locales. Most (85 percent) wind up on the open ground, followed by bushes or shrubbery, then around - not in - trash receptacles. The final 15 percent get stubbed out in planters. Most butt litterers "drop with intent." Others flick and fling. And can you guess the spots with the highest littering rates? Hospitals and other medical sites. This is not the first effort to curb butt-waste. A decade ago, Chris Woolson, a Philadelphia software designer, started a website, www.litterbutt.com, through which people can report license plate numbers of automotive butt-flickers. The site now has more than 3,700 members - a passionate group, judging by the posts - who have generated 86,700 reports. Szaky's genius lies in getting regular people to do the collecting. He partners with companies that want to take responsibility for the end-life of their products - in this case, Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co., a Reynolds American subsidiary. They fund the shipping, processing, and a small donation to nonprofits. So school groups are a big source of items, because the donation can go back to them. Then TerraCycle makes stuff from the items and sells it. Given Szaky's eco-goals, some criticize his collection of non-green "waste" as validating companies that make it. He counters that his job is to collect waste, not to judge it. Indeed, with the butt campaign, he's now partnering with two of the three "Merchant of Death" industries, although he'd rather not put it that way. He's already recycling wine corks from the liquor industry, and the day I talked to him, he was pondering Christmas lights made from the casings of shotgun shells. He judged the result "charming." Others pooh-pooh such radical recycling, contending that it consumes more energy than it saves. Szaky says about 50 independent life-cycle analyses show otherwise. TerraCycle has programs for 47 categories of products, from toothpaste tubes to energy bar wrappers, chip bags to cheese packaging, shoes to MP3 players. As of last week, more than 32 million people had collected nearly 2.5 billion "waste units." More than $4.7 million had been returned to nonprofits. But is there no limit? Trying to think of things just as disgusting as cigarette butts, I teasingly asked Szaky if he was considering a program for, say, chewed gum. Egad. Turns out he is. And it gets better. Or worse. He's in top-secret talks with companies to find uses for soiled diapers, feminine hygiene products, and condoms. What's next? Fingernail clippings?

Separate your recycling: glass with glass, and cigarette butts with cigarette butts. The little smoked ends of filters that clutter street corners and beaches will be "upcycled" into pellets by Terracycle, according to SF Weekly. The company specializes in hard-to-recycle materials, and cigarette butts, with their cellulose acetate filters, are very hard to recycle. They are apparently also hard to throw away in a proper waste bin, with 65 percent of smokers discarding their butts on streets, in parks, or beaches -- anywhere but a trash can. TerraCycle will repurpose the cellulose acetate into shipping pallets, and is doing so in partnership with the Santa Fe Tobacco Company, which produces American Spirits. But there's no curbside collection: recycling-minded smokers will have to collect their butts in a plastic bag and mail them. Copyright NBC Owned Television Stations

Forget about second-hand smoke; one company wants your second-hand cigarette butts.   TerraCycle, a company that specializes in upcycling hard-to-recycle materials, has joined forces with San Diego based nonprofit RippleLife in an effort to repurpose cigarette filters. The effort is sponsored by Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company, which apparently wants to do its part to keep its hipster customers from littering up cool, gentrifying neighborhoods nationwide.   Funded by donations, RippleLife became one of the first grassroots organizations to offer incentives to recycle cigarette butts 18 months ago, but they didn't know what to do with all the butts they collected. Enter TerraCycle, which now offers a way to recycle large quantities of butts by turning them into plastic.   Contrary to popular belief, cigarettes aren't biodegradable because of their filters, which are made of cellulose acetate. It is this acetate that is upcycled into plastic shipping pallets, says Stacey Krauss, TerraCycle's spokeswoman.   "This issue is way more enormous than I ever thought," says Chris Baffico, founder of RippleLife. "If you could show up and clean up 2,000 butts and five or six days later they were right back, you'd see what I mean."   Cigarette butts are some of the most commonly littered materials, with 65 percent of them not making it into trash cans, according to Keep America Beautiful.   "You don't have to walk or drive very far to see that smokers often discard cigarette waste in ways that litter the environment," says Cressida Lozano, head of sales and marketing for SFNTC.   Anyone can participate in this recycling campaign: simply collect the butts in a plastic bag, put that bag in a shipping box, and mail it off to Terracycle. But, as with any new initiative: Will people actually do it?   Terracycle's next coup: Turning dirty diapers into park benches. No kidding.

We all want to be greener. The three R's have become ingrained in our minds since we were little kids. I know I try to recycle and reuse what I can, when I can, but I fall short. Sometimes, I stare at a used up item and just wonder what I can make out of it before I give up and it goes out into the recycling bin! TerraCycle has taken the guess work out of turning trash into treasure with their unique site! So how do they do it? TerraCycle takes items that are traditionally non-recyclable, think your kids juice pouches, toothbrushes, even chip bags, and turns them into products we can use in our everyday lives. You can send them your used up packages through their website or purchase upcycled items from stores like Target and Whole Foods. I was sent a few items to review and each one is a perfect gift for someone on your holiday list, or, perhaps yourself!