NEW BEAUTY BY WORMS, BUTTS, ETC.

It is estimated that our planet is littered with 3.5 trillion fresh cigarette butts each year. And the bigger problem is that they are super toxic. According to studies conducted by San Diego University, just one butt in a liter of water can kill fish.

 

Cigarette butts are the number one item recovered during the annual Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup Day.

 

Photo: Teddy Meeker. Panama City Beach.

 

Pier Park, a premier massive open-air shopping mecca, at Panama City Beach, Florida, recently joined the TerraCycle Cigarette Waste Brigade which collects and recycles butts. Not only is this working to keep their local beaches beautiful and butt-free, just this week, Pier Park announced that for every pound of butts collected, they’ll make a donation to Keep America Beautiful.

 

TerraCycle developed the Waste Brigade to collect waste items, such as discarded butts, and turn them into new products, such as plastic recycling bins, park benches, and storage bins.

 

Photo: Courtesy of Vancity Buzz.

Just two weeks ago, Vancouver became the first city in the world to adopt a cigarette butt recycling program.

 

Terracycle’s program aims to help Vancouver to both reduce their litter problem and keep the butts out of their landfills.

Instead, Vancouver will send the butts collected in the TerraCycle receptacles and send them back to the company, to be recycled into building materials, such as planks and shipping pallets.

TerraCycle has supplied the receptacles, covered costs for installing them, and will cover the costs of collecting the butts. Better still, through this program, TerraCycle provides employment for some of the city’s most marginalized people through two inner-city charities.

Photo: Courtesy of Urban Worm Farms. Red Wiggler Worm.

TerraCycle was founded in 2001, by then-Princeton University student, Tom Szaky, who figured out how to employ worms for recycling profit. He fed worms plant and animal-based garbage, gathered their guano, bottled it used soda bottles, and sold it as Garden Fertilizer.  You can find it in most well-stocked garden stores.

 

Photo: Courtesy of Hearts. TerraCycle Arrow.

 

Most things we use leave solid waste behind. Each type of waste breaks down differently. That means each type of waste has its own set of recycling challenges and opportunities. “Every waste stream has a solution,” Szaky explained.

Photo: Courtesy of Pensar Eco.

Today, working in 26 countries, with over 60 programs in the US alone, TerraCycle is widely considered the world’s leader in the collection and reuse of non-recyclable, post-consumer waste. Their goal: Eliminating the Idea of Waste®.

Photo: Kim Bhasin. TerraCycle Office.

TerraCycle has a zero waste initiative. It prides itself on making on things that are non-recyclable, recyclable. It gets down to separating organics from inorganics and determining the least expensive ways to collect and process every kind of material. The company also designs, manufactures and sells products made from recycled and upcycled materials.

Photo: Courtesy of TerraCycle.

According to Szaky, 80% of objects cost more to recycle than the recycled products were worth. But TerraCycle has worked out Brigade partnership programs with more than 100 brands, which subsidize collection costs via sponsored shipping labels.

Photo: Courtesy of The Family Grapevine. TerraCycle recycled bench.

For example, Garnier, which just last month received the first ever Sustainability Pioneer Award, participates in TerraCycle’s Personal Care and Beauty Brigade. To date, over 2.7+ million pieces of beauty packaging waste have been processed, with more than 12,000 Beauty Brigades, established domestically and internationally.

TerraCycle recently transformed Garnier packaging waste into building supplies and equipment, donated to areas destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.

Photo: Courtesy of 99Mag News.

The newest Brigade takes aim at the over 15 billion wine corks are used worldwide every year. Stacked end to end, that is enough to circle the earth almost 20 times! And because they biodegrade very slowly, we could be drinking ourselves into a garbage problem.

Photo: Courtesy of Terracycle Community.

With help from over 40 million dedicated Brigade participants around the world, TerraCycle reached the major milestones of over 2.5 billion pieces of waste diverted from landfills and over $6 million donated to schools and charities.

Photo: Courtesy of Recycling Pics. Happy Coffee.

Just last year, TerraCycle launched 14 new Brigade programs to collect discarded deodorant tubes, coffee capsules, and baby bottles, with help from companies like Tom’s of Maine, Nespresso, and Blédina.

 

Photo: Rebecca Kelsey. Beauty product packages headed for TerraCycle in a Birchbox.

 

If you are ok to sponsor your own shipping label, you can send TerraCycle your garbage, either using your own packaging, or, now, for the first time, TerraCycle is offering prepaid boxes in small quantities so individuals and small businesses can lower their waste footprint just as large companies do. You can send any (legal) kind of garbage you want to Terracycle, and they’ll figure out a way to keep it out of the waste stream.

Photo: Courtesy of Fast Company. Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle.

Read more about Beauty Recycled, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact in our posts throughout this week, including The Most Beautiful Redux, Mind Blowing Recyclers, Ancient Recycled Flavors Now, Art Recycles Now,  Beautiful Recycled Vacations, and Recycled Minds, Souls, & Notions.

 

Get busy and enter the BN Competitions, Our theme this week is Beautiful Insides. Send in your images and ideas. Deadline is 11.17.13.

 

Image: Courtesy of InterActiveMediaSW.

 

Also, check out our special competition: The Most Beautiful Sound in the World! We are thrilled about this effort, together with SoundCloud and The Sound Agency. And we can’t wait to hear what you’ve got!