Individual Column Searching - Weird Values

Hey All!

I'm noticing a problem with my drop downs - I believe it's due to having a Bootstrap badge in my column values.

My column values are this:

But are being displayed as this in the dropdown:

I'm using the following function to create the dropdowns:

initComplete: function ()
                  {
                    this.api().columns().every( function ()
                    {
                        var column = this;
                        var select = $('<select class="selectpicker show-tick" data-live-search="true"><option value=""></option></select>')
                            .appendTo( $(column.footer()).empty() )
                            .on( 'change', function () {
                                var val = $.fn.dataTable.util.escapeRegex(
                                    $(this).val()
                                );
                                column
                                    .search( val ? '^'+val+'$' : '', true, false )
                                    .draw();
                            } );
                        column.data().unique().sort().each( function ( d, j )
                        {
                            select.append( '<option value="'+d+'">'+d+'</option>' )
                        } );
                    } );
                  }

I have a feeling the bolded part is what is causing the issue, but I'm not entirely sure how to fix it.
var select = $('<select class="selectpicker show-tick" data-live-search="true"><option value=""></option></select>')

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated, been stuck on this for a day or two now