Recycling Cigarette Butts And Turning Them Into Plastic

Everywhere you look there are cigarette ends – making a mess of the street and beaches. Recycling companies cannot deal with it and due to the make-up of the contents it has not so far been possible to recycle them. That was until a company in New Jersey has found a way to recycle that significant amounts of butts and make them into plastic products, railway sleepers and shipping pallets.

TerraCycle has the idea that if others think something cannot be recycled, then they have to find a way to do it. Since their inception in the early 2000s, there are upward of 7,000 recycling bins in nine countries across the globe. The USA, UK and Australia are among them. As smoking will not stop – in fact, it appears to be increasing- there needs to be another way to deal with the ends. The National Institute of Health has calculated that of the 6 trillion cigarettes smoked per annum, 4.5 trillion ends up as litter. These ends contaminate water, and according to Tom Szaky founder of TerraCycle; animals are using them as food. The problem was going to be how to recycle them, and the first stage is to break them down into smaller parts.

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The organic elements are added to compost and go on non-agricultural land while the filters become plastics such as ashtrays and Frisbees. The stumbling block could, however, be the cost as it costs more to make items then they could be sold for, but while the bins are being sponsored, the work can continue.

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