When volunteers swarm Navarre Beach to collect garbage each month, cigarette butts often fill their collection buckets. Thousands of these burned, squished and tossed pieces of plastic trash are left on the beach to eventually wash into the Gulf of Mexico. Once in the water this garbage poses a serious threat to wildlife that may accidentally consume it, but that is where TerraCycle comes in. The Navarre Beach Sea Turtle Conservation Center has partnered with this New Jersey-based recycling company to turn some of the collected waste, including cigarette butts, into new products. TerraCycle lives by the mantra nothing is garbage, as evidenced by its slogan “eliminating the idea of waste.” The company has developed a variety of programs to prove that point, taking materials that are generally considered non-recyclable and giving them new life.

WILMINGTON –  Cigarette smoking is a declining trend in the U.S., but cigarette butts remain a litter problem here and across the globe. The countywide Keep New Hanover Beautiful organization, an affiliate of Keep America Beautiful Inc., recently partnered with city officials on a cigarette butt recycling program aimed at diverting some of this waste from local waterways and streets and the landfill.

WILMINGTON -- According to keep America beautiful, cigarette butts are the most littered item worldwide. That's why the City of Wilmington says it's partnered with Keep New Hanover Beautiful to recycle cigarette butts. The city has installed 110 new cigarette-butt- disposal canisters. The city collects the discarded butts, and Keep New Hanover Beautiful  volunteers mail them to Terracycle, a free waste-collection and recycling facility.  

Area cigarette smokers now have a way to help keep Galesburg’s downtown area clean and help the environment while taking a smoke break. The Galesburg Downtown Council will finish installing a total of 25 cigarette recycling receptacles in the downtown area this Monday, and the organization may order 20 more in the future. The council installed the first five containers earlier this spring, and they were so well received that the council decided to order more for placement on streets including Main, Seminary, Ferris, Simmons and Cherry. TerraCycle, a small business headquartered in Trenton, New Jersey, provides the containers for $70 apiece. Once the plastic bags inside the containers become full of cigarette butts, the council can ship up to 10 pounds worth of them to TerraCycle. The company then melts down the cigarettes and packaging into a hard plastic that can be remolded to make products such as plastic pallets, and converts the leftover tobacco into compost, according to TerraCycle’s website. Keith Legge, operations director for the Downtown Council, said he has collected about 4 pounds of cigarette butts from Galesburg’s receptacles so far. He plans to send the waste off to TerraCycle when he collects about eight or nine pounds. “The (more) cigarette butts we can get off the ground and into any sort of container, that’s great,” Legge said. “They don’t end up in a landfill anywhere, so that’s a big plus.” The council installed the receptacles on streets in the Downtown Special Service Area, which runs approximately from Chambers Street to Cedar Street (running east to west) and from Ferris Street to slightly past Simmons Street (running north to south), according to a Galesburg Economic Development Districts map. The council focused on placing the containers in spots where its maintenance team noticed a plethora of cigarette butts, such as outside of restaurants and bars. Bob Bondi, board member and past president of the council, had the idea to bring the containers to Galesburg when he visited New Orleans for Thanksgiving last year and saw the containers in the French Quarter. The council installed one of the containers outside of his Bondi Building, and in a matter of weeks he could already see a difference. “It went from being kind of bad to being pretty cleaned up,” Bondi said. “I think the only cigarettes we see there is something that blows from another part of the street. The tenants in our building have been very respectful with using the container, and we appreciate their cooperation. “A total of 9,886 locations currently participate in the cigarette waste recycling program, according to TerraCycle’s website. In addition, for every pound of cigarette waste collected, TerraCycle donates $1 to the Keep America Beautiful Cigarette Litter Prevention Program. The Downtown Council will host a meeting this upcoming Wednesday, and its members could discuss the possibility of buying 20 more receptacles. “I think we as a council and a board are so far pleased with how well it’s been received, and the opportunities to clean up our downtown in a positive way,” Bondi said.

This Saturday, the Balboa Village Merchants Association is hosting a neighborhood cleanup along Balboa Street from 32nd through 38th Ave. The event, titled “Balboa Village Cigarette Butt Cleanup“, targets the littering of cigarette butts along the corridor. To participate in Saturday’s Balboa Village Cigarette Butt Cleanup, meet at the Richmond District Neighborhood Center (741 30th Avenue) at 10:30am. All cleanup materials and supplies will be provided. In addition to cleaning up butts, the group is also considering the installation of ashcans along the streets that encourage smokers to dispose of their cigarettes properly. Surfrider, a local environmental group, provides the ashcans as part of their Hold on to Your Butt campaign. The campaign allows businesses and organizations to sponsor ashcans, which are them personalized for the community before they’re installed for use. According to Surfrider, an estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered every year. The filters within the cigarette butt are a nasty lot, and can leach nicotine, arsenic, formaldehyde, and heavy metals like lead and cadmium into water and soil, threatening water quality, marine and terrestrial life, and seafood safety. Surfrider also encourages recycling of the collected butts from ashcans through the TerraCycle program, offering organizations the chance to accrue LEED points and make donations to the charitable foundation of their choice.

Not everyone cares about keeping the West Coast clean, which means its up to volunteers to keep local shores pristine. After riding a swell of support last year, Surfrider Pacific Rim is ready to rip into 2017. “Surfrider has built a network of coastal defenders who transform a passion for our coast into a lasting protection,” said chapter-president Michelle Hall during a recent presentation to Tofino’s municipal council. “We’re fortunate to live in a place where passion for protection is in our blood and we’re a community of guardians including First Nations, environmentalists, scientists as well as ocean lovers, surfers, beach walkers and dog lovers.” She said the foundation laid solid groundwork in 2016 by raising awareness of its initiatives and engaging with the community. “We’re really inclusive to everyone and volunteers really enjoy the citizen feel of our organization,” she said. “Our voice is always positive and we’re always sharing solutions.” She added the foundation holds a public meet up at Tofino Brewing Company on the first Wednesday of every month. “We have a solid crew of 21 amazing people in Tofino and Ucluelet,” she said. “It’s a really good way for new people coming to Tofino and Ucluelet to get involved with their community.” The foundation welcomed over 250 volunteers to 24 beach cleanups in 2016, according to Hall, who said the five most commonly found pollutants were plastics, styrofoam, cigarette butts, fishing gear and recyclables. “In 2016 we collected almost 5,000 kilograms of marine debris from our pristine coastline,” she said. The local Surfrider crew earned huge accolades and widespread media attention with its Straws Suck campaign last year that saw 41 local businesses nix single-use straws from their operations and brought  increased awareness around plastic pollution. Hall said three major campaigns are in the works for 2017: an Ocean Friendly Business, Bring your own Bag and Hold onto your Butt. “The Ocean Friendly Business Campaign will invite all businesses in the Pacific Rim to reduce and eliminate single use plastics,” she said adding straws will continue to be targeted along with shopping bags, single-use cutlery and take-away packaging. “We are working on grants and sponsorships to launch this program.” She said the Ban the Bag campaign will promote the use of re-useable shopping bags and will include a bag-making challenge supported by Tourism Tofino that will test whether or not the West Coast can create 1,000 bags in time for the Pacific Rim Whale Festival in March. The Hang onto Your Butt campaign is aimed at eliminating cigarette pollution and features a unique partnership with TerraCycle, an organization that offers a variety of environmentally-minded programming including a Cigarette Waste Recycling Program. “The waste collected through the Cigarette Waste Recycling Program is recycled into a variety of industrial products, such as plastic pallets, and any remaining tobacco is recycled as compost,” according to TerraCycle’s website. Hall said Surfrider’s anti-cigarette waste program would help raise awareness of the impacts butts have locally. “A big part of the campaign is education. I don’t think an actual campaign or education around cigarette pollution has really been prominent in Ucluelet or Tofino,” she said. During her presentation in Tofino, Hall said Surfrider partnered with Ucluelet to install nine cigarette butt canisters throughout the community. She said Ucluelet’s public works crew empties the canisters and hands the butts off to Surfrider to recycle. “We hope that Tofino would do the same,” she said. “This wouldn’t just be a case of installing them and letting you guys empty them and that’s it, we plan on engaging the youth and doing lots of education at all of our beach cleanups and events throughout the year.” The canisters cost $100 each, according to Hall, and Tofino’s council agreed to buy one for their municipal hall immediately after Hall’s presentation. Coun. Greg Blanchette expressed admiration for the foundation’s quick rise. “Surfrider is really surging ahead in terms of volunteer engagement, community engagement and business engagement, in a way that, in my experience on the Coast, is basically unprecedented,” he said. “Congratulations on all of your successes.” Mayor Josie Osborne agreed. “I want to say thank you and really commend you, Michelle, for your leadership and Surfrider for everything that you do,” she said. “You really have gone above and beyond in terms of your community engagement and what I really appreciate is how positively everything is occurring.”

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!

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.

Dive Brief:

• The Virginia General Assembly is considering a bill with bipartisan sponsorship that would classify cigarette butts as litter in the state's code, as reported by the Associated Press.
• Delegate Jackson Miller, one of the bill's co-sponsors, said this is based on his experiences as a former police officer. Miller has seen judges dismiss tickets for littering because they don't believe cigarette butts count.
• The bill was passed by a House committee on Jan. 25 and would require passage by the full House and the Senate before coming to Governor Terry McAuliffe for a signature.

Dive Insight: The bill itself is simple and would add a small update to the state's definition of litter, which currently includes "all waste material, disposable packages or containers." If the law is passed, the phrase "including cigarette or cigar butts" would be added to that list. According to a fiscal impact statement filed with the legislation, the state code currently "provides for the assessment of a civil penalty of up to $5,000 against a person found by the court to have improperly disposed of solid waste" though full enforcement of this fine for minor cigarette litter would be unlikely. Cigarette butts are categorized differently throughout the country, but this is part of a growing trend to get a grip on how many of them end up on the street. Many cities have been putting up creative collection receptacles and companies such as TerraCycle have developed ways to recycle the materials within. In Paris — where smokers had been discarding an estimated 350 metric tons of butts per year — the city has launched a large educational campaign and begun fining litterers €68 (approx. $73 USD) for the act. Litter of any kind is a problem, but the chemicals in cigarette butts can have even more pernicious environmental effects. Yet keeping them out of natural areas has been a challenge. A recent study found that cigarette butts are the most common type of litter on Chicago's beaches despite a smoking ban that took effect in 2007.  

They collect cigarette butts separately because they can be recycled. Trash Tramps organizer Nancy Schulz says they bring the butts to the Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District office, and they eventually make their way to a New Jersey recycling company called Terracycle.