'It seems like a no brainer,' Sylvan Lake installs cigarette butt recycling program

A program that was introduced in Sylvan Lake allows you to recycle your cigarette butts.

Terra Cycle is the company, they install cigarette recycling stations in municipalities, back in June they installed 30 across the beachfront of Sylvan Lake.

This is following the Smoke Free Bylaw that town council adopted in May after an increase in public requests, they also enhanced their definition of smoking.

The definition of 'smoke' or 'smoking' now includes anything you inhale to exhale, which includes e-cigarettes, hookahs, or any other type of vaporizer designed to burn or heat tobacco, cannabis, or any other weed or substance for the purpose of inhaling or tasting its smoke or emissions.

The goal was to further limit the exposure of harmful second hand smoke to vulnerable people.

They also extended their smoking restrictions to any public place a child may be present, and the distance allowed for smoking from an entrance has increased from 3 to 5 meters.

Joanne Gaudet explained, “it seems like a no brainer, if we can find waste that would end up in a landfill and find a secondary use for it, why not?”

She said in there last fall underwater and beach cleanups, they collected 8400 cigarette butts that are now being recycled.

She says Terra Cycle has committed to donate one dollar to a local non-profit organization for every pound of cigarettes collected.

They are doing another volunteer based underwater cleanup on Sunday the 23 of September.

“We want everyone to enjoy the quality of experience and if it means that somebody has to go up to the sidewalk to smoke to ensure that the park is clean and healthy for everyone else to use then I don’t think anyone is going to really have a problem with that, and we really are doing it with the best of intentions.”