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

Com um crescimento tão significativo no consumo, a consequência é um aumento considerável na produção de lixo. E, em tempos de aquecimento global, a reciclagem de cápsulas de café é mais do que necessária.

Com atuação em 21 países, entidade atua no Brasil por meio de Programas Nacionais de Reciclagem em parceria com empresas e consumidores, incluindo os do ramo de alimentação

 

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

The Halifax Wire      21 Jul 2021        CONTRIBUTED Halifax’s Anchor Dental is committing to helping the environment with the installation of Safety Equipment and Protective Gear Zero Waste Boxes. They are in partnership with TerraCycle®. When the staff at Anchor Dental noticed the amount of personal protective equipment (PPE) like masks, gloves and disinfectant wipes that were entering landfills, they decided to help. After partnering with TerraCycle® to employ a Safety Equipment and Protective Gear Zero Waste Box in their office, Anchor Dental is now providing an easy way for staff to recycle used masks, gloves and disinfectant wipes. With TerraCycle’s special waste box placed conveniently inside the office, staff can divert this waste from landfills.

Especially in the wake of COVID-19, the planet needs protection from the surge of improperly discarded PPE that is leaking into marine environments and posing serious hazards to ocean wildlife. TerraCycle, focusing in the collection and repurposing of complex waste streams, created the Zero Waste Box program to provide solutions for difficult-to-recycle waste that cannot be recycled through the company’s brandsponsored,

national recycling programs or standard municipal recycling. When customers return a Safety Equipment and Protective Gear Zero Waste Box for recycling, it’s received at a regional TerraCycle warehouse where the waste is manually sorted by material type. The individual waste streams are sent to third party specialty subcontracting facilities for mechanical processing. After undergoing mechanical processing, the resulting material can be remolded into a variety of new products such as plastic shipping pallets, railroad ties or outdoor furniture. Before its partnership with TerraCycle, Anchor Dental was - and continues to be recycling all used plastic air/ water syringe tips and suction tips through local municipalities. "If we are not going to recycle these items, we are not setting the correct example. If we can reduce these items in the waste stream, then we are better corporate citizens. It’s that simple. You need to do what you can,” Dr. Ken Rhodenizer, DDS at Anchor Dental, said in a press release. More information about Anchor Dental can be found at www.anchordental.ca/. More details on TerraCycle is at www.TerraCycle.ca.

Alguns itens como embalagens de salgadinhos e esponjas de lavar louças também podem ser reciclados, mas com empresas específicas – relaxa, a gente vai te contar todos os detalhes!