Las Vegas to recycle cigarette filters

United States – Major hotels on the Las Vegas Strip are devoting more attention to recycling. MGM Resorts International, Caesars Entertainment and Las Vegas Sands are among the resort’s major players to seek to cut waste and boost recycling.

Initiatives include: composting thousands of tonnes of leftover food; converting plastic room keys and loyalty club cards into picture frames; transforming wine corks into sandals; and reconstituting crushed empty beer bottles as decorative blocks. And remarkably, Caesars Entertainment is launching a pilot programme to send cigarette butts to a recycler to recover the leftover tobacco and the plastic in the filters, according to a report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Meanwhile, MGM claims to have more than tripled its recycling rate since 2007 to around 44%. The company has set itself the goal of diverting at least half of its waste from landfill by next year. Caesars Entertainment has set the same target for 2020.