Stadium and venue owners and managers are constantly on the look out for new ways to make their facilities cleaner, more efficient and more environmentally-friendly. With the help of recycling pioneer TerraCycle, facility managers across the US can now recycle their cigarette waste.
Instead of the butts going to landfill, TerraCycle composts the paper and leftover tobacco and recycles the filters into plastic for industrial uses, such as pallets.
According to Keep America Beautiful, cigarette butts are the most frequently littered waste item. 65% of cigarette waste is disposed of improperly and accounts for 30% of litter at “transition points” where smokers must discontinue smoking before proceeding. Contrary to popular belief, cigarette butts are not biodegradable.
To address the desire to rid facility grounds of cigarette waste in an environmentally-responsible way, the Nashville Predators and Bridgestone Arena have recently joined TerraCycle’s Cigarette Waste Brigade®.
Chris Parker, Executive Vice President of the Predators, said he was “proud of both the building and the community for being one of the first organisations to actively rid its venue of cigarette waste”. Parker added that he “hopes this movement catches on with other stadiums”.
Arena staff collect the discarded cigarette butts on the sidewalks outside of the Arena and in plaza areas where smoking is permitted following Predators home games and Bridgestone Arena concerts. With postage paid by TerraCycle, the boxes of butts are then shipped to a plant in New Jersey for recycling.
Managers looking for additional ways to reduce waste can also utilise TerraCycle’s new Zero Waste Boxes. These boxes enable stadiums and venues to recycle everything from cleaning supplies, plastic cups, fluorescent light bulbs, Styrofoam® and plastic cups, plates and utensils, and chewed gum.
All Zero Waste Boxes can be purchased at zerowasteboxes.terracycle.com for a variety of prices. When a box is full, it is simply shipped to TerraCycle for processing.
Since 2007, TerraCycle has used innovative recycling processes to repurpose otherwise landfill-bound consumer packaging waste into useful materials and products, such as recycled plastic lumber, industrial shipping pallets, and park benches. Between the Cigarette Waste Brigade and Zero Waste Boxes, there are almost no limits to what can be recycled.