Breaking Butts

Bernalillo County and the Keep Bernco Beautiful Advisory Board are partnering up with Terracycle and sponsoring a cigarette butt recycling program. We’re calling it “Breaking Butts” and it includes the receptacles, maintenance, collection and recycling of cigarette butts. Once the butts are received at the recycling facility, the paper and tobacco are separated for composting. The plastic filters are turned into plastic pellets and used to make new products.
Cigarette butts seem like a small issue – people think they are made of paper and are harmless – but this couldn’t be further from the truth. They are primarily made of cellulose acetate (CA), a type of plastic. Worldwide they contribute 845,000 tons per year to our litter problem. You can check out this link for a brief article on the importance of the cigarette butt pollution issue. www.earthday.org/tiny-but-deadly-cigarette-butts-are-the-...