Turning Philly’s Cigarette Butts into Park Benches

The 19-inch rectangular receptacle is called a TerraCycle “zero waste” box. Installed in February by the Fishtown Neighbors Association, the box can hold hundreds of cigarette butts before they’re shipped to New Jersey, where they’ll be processed and recycled into things like ashtrays, fence posts, industrial supplies, and park benches.

And the $99 box is just one small step toward Trenton-based TerraCycle’s ultimate goal: recycling everything. A large part of achieving that is addressing cigarette butts, which are the most littered item in the world and make up more than one-third of the roadway litter in the United States, according to a 2010 report. Philadelphia has the highest rate of smoking among the 10 largest cities in America and a well-documented litter problem.

There’s just something about flicking away the end of a cigarette that doesn’t trigger the same “litter” association as throwing a plastic bottle on the ground, observed Tom Morales, the program manager for education and litter at the nonprofit Keep America Beautiful.

Many smokers believe cigarette butts are biodegradable, he said, but the filters are in fact made of cellulose acetate, a plastic that can remain in the environment for decades.

Enter TerraCycle. The 15-year-old company, once called a “garbage start-up,” was founded by current CEO Tom Szaky, a Princeton dropout who has since built it up to employ about 70 people in Trenton and 200 worldwide.

In Szaky’s ideal world, everything is recycled, which is why a large part of the business is simply testing processes for how they can break down different types of trash into something usable. What makes TerraCycle’s model complicated is that each type of garbage — everything from diapers to shoes to juice pouches to hair — has a different process.

Cigarette and tobacco waste, which TerraCycle started accepting in 2012, is its own animal. The receptacles themselves must be weather-resistant and flame-resistant and something must draw smokers’ attention to them, whether a bright color or a sign. On the side of Fishtown’s custom boxes is printed: “Gimme those butts!”