Holy Trinity Anglican Church isn’t about to sit back and rely upon divine intervention to eradicate the cigarette butts from its premises on the corner of Northern Avenue East and Great Northern Road.
Instead, the church has shelled out approximately $130 in order to purchase a cigarette recycling station from TerraCycle, a private recycling business from the United States, in order to recycle the contents of discarded cigarette butts for use in park benches, bike racks, shipping pallets and recycling bins.
Reverend Claire Miller says the TerraCycle cigarette recycling station has been in place at the back door of Holy Trinity Anglican Church for nearly a month now, and will take the place of cigarette butt containers the church has used in the past.
“Because we’re up here on the hill, it gets very windy. They get blown over and they get spilled, or people miss them,” said Miller. “This is something visible and fastens to the wall. We’re hoping it will be a real benefit to the grounds and the people.”
The following items are accepted by the TerraCycle cigarette recycling station:
- Extinguished cigarettes
- Ash
- Cigarette filters
- Loose tobacco pouches
- Rolling papers
- Inner foil packaging in cigarette packs
- Outer packaging of cigarette packs
The contents of the cigarette recycling station are emptied into a bag, then boxed up.
The cigarette butt waste collected at the church will then be shipped - postage paid - to a Canadian warehouse maintained by TerraCycle, where the cigarette waste is sorted and processed into plastic pellets for use in a number of recycled products, while the tobacco collected is composted.
Miller hopes that people are more inclined to use the cigarette butt receptacle - instead of the church parking lot - if they’re aware of the TerraCycle cigarette recycling program.
“The only thing they won’t take are the actual cardboard cigarette packages, because we can put those in our recycling. But they take everything else,” Miller said.
TerraCycle also issues ‘points’ for recycled waste, which can be redeemed for charitable gifts or a cash donation to a non-profit organization or school.
Miller says the idea was initially sparked by a member of the Anglican Church Women, a council comprised of roughly 30 women who meet on a monthly basis.
“It turned out to be quite easy to apply and then purchase one of these receptacles. It wasn’t very expensive, so I thought well, let’s go ahead and do it,” said Miller. “The church council was very receptive to the idea.”
Miller tells SooToday that Holy Trinity Anglican Church has already banned the use of plastic coffee creamers, straws and water bottles as part of its ongoing “green initiatives.”
“It’s more of an awareness thing - if we think about this at church, hopefully people will think about this when they go home and use less plastic, and think more about how to protect the environment,” she said.
TerraCycle has somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 cigarette recycling receptacles currently in use throughout North America.