Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. (SFNTC) has teamed up with TerraCycle, a world leader in developing solutions for hard-to-recycle materials, to do something about cigarette butt litter. SFNTC manufactures Natural American Spirit additive-free, natural tobacco cigarettes and roll-your-own tobaccos, which include styles that are made with 100 percent organic tobacco as well as 100 percent U.S. Grown tobacco.

Facility managers can send cigarette waste to be recycled free of charge by participating in a new program launched by TerraCycle and facilitated by funding from Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. The waste collected through TerraCycle’s Cigarette Waste Brigade will be recycled into a variety of industrial products, such as plastic pallets. Any remaining tobacco will be reworked into tobacco composting.

According to Keep America Beautiful (KAB), 65 percent of all cigarette butts are disposed of improperly, which is why Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. has teamed up with TerraCycle to do something about cigarette butt litter. With funding from Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. (SFNTC), TerraCycle is launching a national program, The Cigarette Waste Brigade, to collect and recycle cigarette waste. By sponsoring this program, SFNTC is not only taking responsibility for the end-life of its products, but also for the products of its competitors.

Instead of just collecting cigarette butts in indoor and outdoor ashtrays and throwing them away, facilities managers can recycle them to earn money for Keep America Beautiful.  Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company partnered with recycling pioneer TerraCycle to launch the Cigarette Waste Brigade, the first cigarette butt recycling program to operate in the US. The free program allows managers to send in tobacco waste for to be recycled.  For each pound of waste collected through the Brigade, $1 is donated to Keep America Beautiful. The building or facility's participation in the Cigarette Waste Brigade is something that can be communicated through posters and fliers available on TerraCycle's website, adding a feel-good, environmental layer to tenants' experience.

Earlier this year, New Mexico-based Santa Fe Natural Co., a subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., the nation's second-largest cigarette maker, and TerraCycle Inc. announced a partnership to recycle cigarette butts into pellets used to make such items as park benches, shipping pallets and railroad ties. The Cigarette Waste Brigade asks people to save and collect their butts, sending them to the recycling company through a prepaid shipping label. For every pound of cigarette waste sent to Trenton, N.J.-based TerraCycle, the sender will receive 100 TerraCycle points, which can be redeemed for a variety of charitable gifts, or for a payment of 1 cent per point to the charity of their choice, according to TerraCycle's website. The company plans to recycle the filters into pellets used to make a number of items, including ashtrays. The paper and tobacco also will be composted. It took nearly two years to develop the process to recycle the butts, made of paper, tobacco, ash and a filter from cellulose acetate, the company said. "This is one of the most exciting developments in TerraCycle's history," said Tom Szaky, TerraCycle's founder, in a statement when the program was launched. "As a company committed to recycling waste streams that others deem worthless or unsavory, cigarette waste will help to promote our belief that everything can and should be recycled." Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky is sponsoring the bill on the Senate side. "This should really be done at a higher level than the state level," DenDekker said about the recycling program. "But nobody in the federal government would even consider talking about a topic like this until some municipality somewhere institutes a pilot program that works, creates jobs and saves government money."

Cigarette waste can be found on most roadways and is very common in public places such as the beach or park. We have become immune to seeing cigarette butts on the ground and most people probably haven’t thought about recycling as an option for them. A new partnership with TerraCycle now makes recycling cigarette waste an option. 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. Some may question the safety of the products produced with recycled cigarette filters. There is no need to worry. 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. TerraCycle’s goal is to reduce the amount of cigarette waste we see every day. Recycling this material will make a significant impact when it comes to reducing waste. By creating new products, such as pallets, from cigarette filters reduces both the amount of waste in landfills and the quantity of virgin materials needed to make new products.

Founded in 2001 by CEO Tom Szaky, TerraCycle's anti-butt campaign, dubbed Cigarette Waste Brigade, is a essentially a war on the seemingly countless discarded cancer sticks that litter our beaches, streets, and waterways. All parts of the extinguished cigarettes—the filters, the outer plastic packaging, the inner foil packaging, the rolling paper, and, yes, even the ashes—are collected by registered "brigades," which are located all over the world. The brigades ship the cigarette detritus to TerraCycle, which then melts and recycles then into plastic lumber, pallets, bins, and ashtrays. A house, for example, could be framed from this type of recycled material. Sponsored by the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company, TerraCycle's Cigarette Brigade aims to work with more than 20 million people already collecting various types of waste for them in over 20 countries. “We certainly hope that TerraCycle is becoming a global spotlight on the issue of waste in our society!," said Albe Zakes, the company's Global VP and Media Relations. "Education and awareness are the basis of evolution and we find that many average consumers are simply unaware of the massive size and impact of waste in our consumer driven economy."

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 atwww.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.

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 atwww.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.

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 atwww.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.