The Town of Middleburg now has a cigarette recycling program. Many of the Town's trash cans have a new addition – a cigarette waste receptacle – to collect cigarette butts, filters, ash, and wrappers.

The Town collects the cigarette waste placed in the receptacles and sends it to TerraCycle for recycling. TerraCycle recycles that waste at no charge to the Town. For every pound of cigarette waste the Town recycles, TerraCycle also makes a $1 donation to Keep America Beautiful.

The recycling process involves separating the tobacco and paper from the other waste. The tobacco and paper are composted. Filters and other plastic waste (yes, filters are made of thousands of tiny plastic fibers, not cotton) are cleaned, melted, and formed into pellets. The plastic pellets are then mixed with other plastics like polypropylene and polyethylene to make recycled plastic products like shipping pallets, plastic lumber, and ashtrays. If Middleburg's smokers faithfully use the cigarette waste receptacles, the Town expects to recycle over 250,000 cigarette butts per year.

The cigarette recycling program is designed to keep Middleburg cleaner and to keep residents, visitors, pets, and wildlife safer. Cigarette butts are the most frequently littered item in the world, and Middleburg is part of the world when it comes to cigarette litter. During Town clean-ups, volunteers find cigarette butts tossed on the street, in parking lots, in grassy areas, in bushes, and in planters. Cigarette butts are the item volunteers pick up most frequently, and cigarette butts probably outnumber all other types of litter by at least 20 to 1.

Cigarette filters are more than just unsightly litter. They contain nicotine as well as some mixture of up to 165 other toxic chemicals. Every year, infants and toddlers, pets, and wildlife are poisoned by trying to eat cigarette butts. As little as 1 milligram of nicotine can be toxic to an infant, and waste cigarette filters can contain 5-7 milligrams of nicotine. According to Professor Jonathan Folds at the Penn State College of Medicine, there are hundreds of cases of children being poisoned by cigarettes each year.

Putting cigarette waste in the new receptacles also protects the Town's water from the toxic chemicals contained in cigarette butts. We know that cigarette butts are a source of water pollution because clean-up volunteers find piles of dozens and sometimes hundreds of cigarette butts in areas where leaves or other debris block storm drains and roadside drainage areas. Rains push the other cigarette waste down the Town's storm drains and roads, into local creeks, ponds and rivers, and eventually into the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean where they leach toxic chemicals into the water. Studies conducted by Clean Virginia Waterways showed that as little as one cigarette butt in two gallons of water leached enough toxic chemicals to kill water fleas (Daphnia ambigua). Water fleas are important microscopic crustaceans that live in most Northern Virginia ponds, slow-moving streams, and lakes. Water fleas form the basic food source for small fish, tadpoles, salamanders, newts and aquatic insects.

Please use and urge your friends to use the new cigarette receptacles and to participate in keeping Middleburg clean and safe.