Cigarette butts can now be recycled in India instead of adding to waste pile-up and environmental degradation. Two youngsters named Naman Gupta and Vishal Kanet noticed large number of spent cigarette butts leftover after weekend parties and decided to form a startup named ‘CODE’ to recycle them. Studies have shown that cigarette butts are the most discarded waste around the world, with about 5.6 trillion cigarettes are sold each year out of which half are discarded. Just the city of Bengaluru suffers a burden of 3.1 million cigarette butts.
Under the CODE initiative, members are provided with steel garbage bins worth INR99 for 3 months or INR499 for 5 years. Cigarette butts are put in these bins, which are then collected every 15 days. Members are paid INR800 for collecting each kilogram of cigarette waste. CODE started its initiative in mid-2016 and has about 70 members in Noida. The collected waste is then taken for recycling, where chemicals are added to tobacco and paper to convert them to compost. Similarly, after the cigarette ash is collected in huge quantities, it is used to make fly ash bricks. About 1 ton of ash is required to convert it to bricks. The filter is cleaned and reused, however CODE aims to make air filters using the filter material.
The duo has collected about 10 kg of waste till now, which would otherwise clog the drains and add to water and air pollution. Collecting this waste actually helps to curb down smoking as at the end of the day, people can see in their bins how much they have smoked and it increases self-awareness about smoking as well.
Date – 17-12-2016 | Source – http://www.hindustantimes.com
