Efforts to recycle cigarette butts light up

By Shaun Curry, AFP/Getty Images

Cigarette butts often the world's most littered item, are the targets of new recycling efforts. This month in Canada, a private company announced it's working with an unnamed tobacco company to recycle the toxic butts into plastic pallets for industrial use.

TerraCycle, a company with offices in 2o countries that takes hard-to-recycle waste, will expand into butts and filters. It will give people free prepaid UPS shipping labels to mail the waste they've collected as well as points (equal to $1 per pound of waste received) they can donate to a charity of their choice.

"As a company committed to recycling waste streams that others deem worthless or unsavory, cigarette waste will help to promote our belief that everything can and should be recycled," Toronto native and TerraCycle founder Tom Szaky said in announcing the program.

TerraCycle joins other nascent efforts to recycle cigarette butts which, contrary to what many smokers may think, are not biodegradable. Rather, they're made from cellulose acetate, a plastic that absorbs tobacco "tar" and can leach a cigarette's toxic chemicals into the environment as it slowly breaks down.

In New York, Assemblyman Michael DenDekker, a former smoker, has proposed a bill that would create a statewide cigarette butt recycling program. He said New York City alone spends more than $250,000 each year to dispose of cigarette butts.

San Francisco issued a 20-cent per pack "litter abatement fee" on cigarettes in July 2009. Philip Morris USA, the nation's largest tobacco manufacturer, sued, arguing the fee was really a cigarette "tax in disguise" that required voter approval. Last year, however, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ronald E. Quidachay upheld the city's fee.

In Japan, students are taking cigarette butts and -- after a employing a technique developed by scientists to reduce harmful toxins -- weaving them into fabric for T-shirts, according to the Asahi Shimbun.

A study published in 2010 found that the cigarette butts can be recycled to make steel stronger. Chinese researchers said butts contain nine chemicals, including nicotine, that protect a type of steel from rusting under even harsh conditions. Their cigarette-derived cocktail reduced corrosion between 90% and 94%.

The scientists from Xi'an Jiaotong University, whose work appeared in the American Chemical Society's Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, said this steel (N80) is used widely in the oil industry.

- USA Today