In April, the City of Kingston, in partnership with the Downtown Kingston Business Improvement Area (BIA), installed 20 cigarette waste receptacles strategically, particularly near bus stops and other high-traffic areas of the downtown area. The receptacles are designed by TerraNova, and the waste collected in them is sent back to the company for recycling, diverting all the waste from landfills.
While the first few weeks were slow in terms of people actually using the units to dispose of cigarette butts and other associated waste, once citizens began to use them more regularly, there was a noticeable increase in their popularity, according to Troy Stubinski, Public Works operations manager for the City of Kingston. “When we started to roll it out, it was a slow uptake, but now we seem to be seeing success,” Stubinski said, noting that the cleaning crews that tend to the downtown streets have noticed less cigarette waste on sidewalks and along the curb in places that used to be littered with butts.
“Initially, we started with a weekly collection of all the containers and we’ve had to increase that to three times a week that we’re having to collect them, just because of the increase that we’re seeing. So that’s all good news!”
Stubinski said that, although they’ve had to relocate some of the units to more favourable locations, that’s all part of ironing out the wrinkles of a new program. Additionally, the City is looking into whether to stay with the units that are currently being used or change them out for different receptacles, simply because water gets into the units during rainfall. Otherwise, the program has been quite successful, particularly for it being the first few months of the program, Stubinski explained.
As of yet, none of the waste has actually been sent back to Terracycle for recycling, so Stubinski wasn’t able to say how much waste has been collected in terms of weight. However, the City has quite a sizable amount of the waste that is currently being dried out in order to send it, and Stubinski said they intend to send their first shipment of waste away for recycling this fall. “We have to dry them out before we send them, and that takes a bit of time,” he said, noting that the drying time is another reason his team is looking into whether or not to change the receptacles out for ones that may be less impacted by rain. “But we certainly have been pleasantly surprised to see how it’s going.”