US: TerraCycle Turning Cigarette Butts to Plastic

Source from:  Economic Times 02/06/2013

Recycling entrepreneur Tom Szaky is stubbing out the world's cigarette problem - one butt at a time. The 30-year-old who dropped out of Princeton University to start TerraCycle in Trenton, New Jersey, says there's no such thing as trash, even when you're talking about the contents of ashtrays.

In a program started in May in Canada and now running from the United States to Spain, TerraCycle collects cigarette butts from volunteers and turns them into plastic, which can be used for anything, even ashtrays themselves.

The discarded cigarettes, which litter countries around the world, are first broken up, with the paper and remaining tobacco composted.

The filter, made of a plastic called cellulose acetate, is melted down and turned into an ingredient for making a wide range of industrial plastic products, such as pallets - the trays used to ship heavy goods. The tobacco industry, happy to get some decent publicity, pays TerraCycle.

Volunteer collectors win points per butt, which can then be redeemed as contributions to charities. TerraCycle, sells recycled products to retailers like Walmart and Whole Foods.

Juice sachets, plastic bottles, pens, coffee capsules, candy wrappers, toothbrushes and computer keyboards are all grist for TerraCycle's mill.

Some items go to classic recycling, meaning they are used purely as material for a wholly new product.

Others are upcycled, which means the shape of the piece of garbage is retained and incorporated into a new product. For example, candy wrappers, complete with their logos, are used to bind books, or are joined together to make backpacks.

"The purpose of TerraCycle is to make things that are non recyclable recyclable," CEO Szaky said at the New Jersey headquarters. Soon they'll be doing chewing gum and dirty diapers, but Szaky said his "personal favorite" is used cigarettes.

It takes between 1,000 and 2,000 butts to make a plastic ashtray, and more than 200,000 to make a garden chair. Not that there's any shortage of supplies: 37 per cent of the world's litter is in cigarette butts, with up to a couple trillion thrown out yearly, Szaky said.

About 35 million people across 22 countries take part in TerraCycle's collection programs, which are financed by businesses, like Old Navy clothing in the United States and Colgate, which supports the toothbrush collection.

Szaky's company began when two people had the idea of harvesting worm excrement for fertilizer. Now it employs about 100 people. Enditem