5 ms·
Would you recycle cigarette butts in your company?
I have a recycling company specialized in cigarette butts that brings colecting and recycling services for companies and turn this garbage into high end products such as paint.
With this paint, we paint murals or walls in every company once an year involving the employees, and we also visit schools every week and hold awareness workshops with colecting days.
If you own a company, or work for a big company, what do you do with cigarette butts everyday?
One single butt can contaminate 50 lt of water!
I appreciate your feedback.
Thanks
- King-Aaron 5y agoI'm interested in hearing more about the process! Of all the garbage out there, cigarette butts were the last thing I would have imagined as being recyclable!
- Teko 5y agoI know! We are from Uruguay and we are considering to visit the US and talk about our project. This yeas we colected a million butts, and we developed 3 recycling patents. Basically the process recover the cellulose acetate of cigarette butts, which is plastic and we turn them into high end products. The organics such as paper are compostable.
- King-Aaron 5y agoThat's fantastic, I definitely hope it becomes a successful venture for you!
- Teko 5y agoThank you very much!
- ajmurmann 5y agoThis problem is really intriguing to me. It seems to be a problem that has somewhat of a significant impact on a global scale. Yet, I have never been part of a discussion about what to do with cigarette butts in my professional or my private life. I've been part of general recycling training in both. Smoking in general seems to be pushed out of view and out of any people's minds. I also expect this to be a very small problem for your average company and the average company's employee pool to be a minor contributor. My office is in an old-school office park. The only ash tray and is in the designated smoking area that's shared by multiple offices/companies. While I am a large stake holder for things like office layout, remodel etc. this has never come up. Maybe the property management company would be interested? Another avenue to get to interested business might be to reach out to businesses where customers typically smoke. Bars immediately come to mind.
- Teko 5y agoI appreciate all this feedback. I been working in this project for the last 2 years and we have learn a lot. For example, one of the main reason why people throw the cigarette butt in the floor or not even care about polution, it's because they believe cigarette butts are made of cotton, which is not, because it's plastic. And in the other hand, because most countries in the world consider this "garbage" seems like lost wor. But we want to prove is not! That can change that. First step is awareness, then colecting system and finally recycling in high end products such us paint. Our services provide OEM ashtray rental, monthly colecting and recycling, and a social program with schools.
- ajmurmann 5y ago> And in the other hand, because most countries in the world consider this "garbage" seems like lost wor. But we want to prove is not! Your employer-angle is curious to me. How could I as an employer benefit from the value of cigarette butts?
- Teko 5y agoI thank you for the question, as it is very important. We have created a social responsibility program that includes several packages depending on the need or interest of each company. The first is to solve the collection of cigarette butts, for which we offer the manufacture and rental of ashtrays personalized with your logo. Then: 1. We created the "ONE Campaign" which consists of recycling one million cigarette butts into paint. 2. This campaign will have its own web page, and all the companies that contract our service will appear in a prominent section of the site. 3. This paint can be used to paint facilities in your company or donate and refurbish a square in your neighborhood. 4. This goal of one million is a commitment with the neighbors of each locality. In this sense, we will organize collection days and your company's logo may appear on the volunteers' vests. 5. We offer awareness talks in schools and your company's logo can be on the Rollup or informative materials as a sponsor. 6. Every 6 months you will receive a traceability report of the waste collected and the positive social and environmental impact generated. If you are interested, I invite you to visit our website -in spanish-: www.nmc.uy (community), www.teko.uy (recycling) and www.one.org.uy (campaign). I appriciate your feedback!
- simonblack 5y agoWhat's the cost-effectiveness of the whole process for the company? What's the level of pre-processing of the butts on the company's part? Who handles and/or pays for transport of the used butts? While I could applaud the thinking of recycling butts, is it a worthwhile economic endeavour? Do the costs outweigh the benefits at the end of the day?