After smoking cigarettes, people throw the remaining part anywhere. This part is called butts. A discarded cigarette butt of 0.2 grams can take up to 15 years to completely decompose. It can be recycled to make toys and fabric.
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When I first heard about fabric from cigarette butts, I was surprised. To know about this process, I have come to meet Naman Gupta, a resident of Noida.
Naman has been making cushions, teddy bears, soft toys, stationery paper, denim clothes from this cotton-like fabric for the last 6 years. With this he is doing business worth Rs 100 crore annually.
It’s a pile of cigarette butts. After smoking the cigarette, the remaining part is crushed and thrown away. It’s called butts.
It is almost 11 in the morning. As soon as you enter the factory of Naman’s company ‘Code Efforts’, you start smelling cigarettes. The people working are wearing masks and gloves. A man is pouring cigarette butts out of a sack. The other is collecting the fabric coming out of it.
As soon as you go inside, Naman’s staff says, ‘You also wear a mask, otherwise you will face breathing problems.’ Only cigarette butts will be visible here. ,
Naman is looking at cigarette butts. Says, ‘We recycle only dried cigarette butts. This is the filter part of the cigarette. It is made from polymer or fiber material. It’s hard to believe, but this small thing takes more than 10 years to decompose.
Naman is taking me around the factory. They say- Let us first see the entire process, this will make it easier for you to understand our work.
This is Naman Gupta. His company produces cotton-like fabric by recycling cigarette butts.
‘There are more than 45 thousand cigarette butts in this pile. There are 3 thousand butts in one kilogram. First of all we separate the paper from this filter. After that this fiber material is taken out and collected.
It is ground in the same way as spices are ground in a grinder machine, so that it becomes fine. Then it is kept with water and chemicals for 24 hours.
It is prepared in the form of pulp. Then it is put in the dryer to dry. Just as earlier cotton was washed in villages to make quilts and mattresses, in the same way it is put in a machine and prepared like cotton.
In this way, the fabric coming out of cigarette butts is put in the machine and washed.
Naman is shown with cotton in his hand. It is difficult for me to believe that such a material can be produced by recycling something like cigarette butts.
Naman tells about his early days. He says, ‘My dream since childhood was to become a CA. The year was 2013-14. After 12th, took admission in commerce from distance.
It’s about college days. Nowadays there is a trend of smoking cigarettes among college students. Most kids smoke cigarettes to look cool. This is dangerous for health as well as the environment.
I have never taken a single puff of cigarette till date, but I used to see people smoking. After smoking, people would rub the remaining residue with their shoes and move ahead.
It is about 2018. I was in final year. One day when I picked up the cigarette butt and looked at it, I saw something like a fiber in it. When I sat down to do research, I came to know that it is a fiber which does not rot for years.
Naman’s elder brother is Vipul Gupta. Vipul and Naman started this business.
Naman says, ‘My elder brother Vipul Gupta has studied engineering. I had a commerce background. I just told my brother that can we make something by recycling cigarette butts?
Both of us started working on what could be made from it. It was discovered that soft toys can be made by preparing a material like cotton. When I talked to father, his first question was – how will you collect it?
I too had the same challenge. We prepared 3 models for collecting cigarette butts.
- First we started keeping boxes at cigarette shops to collect butts. Bins for putting cigarette butts are installed in the smoking zones of big corporate offices in Noida, Delhi and Gurgaon. Our team collects it every 15 days. We also get money from the corporate office under the Waste Management Policy.
- We collect cigarette butts from ragpickers and unemployed volunteers. They are also paid Rs 250 per kilogram.
- In the third model of waste collection, we collect cigarette butts through our vendors present in different states of the country. Currently, cigarette waste is coming from more than 15 states including Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh.
Paper, filter and tobacco, all three are separated from cigarette butts. The filter is then left for 24 hours with a chemical.
Naman says, ‘When we started in 2018, we had invested about Rs 20 lakh. Had taken all this money from father. There have been no restrictions in our family since the beginning. Papa also has a business in Australia.
We started preparing cotton by recycling cigarette butts. This cotton is lab tested with safety papers. Initially started making soft toys from this cotton, but its market is not that much.
Since the advent of mobiles, children’s inclination towards soft toys has decreased. We were in loss for 3 years. When we went to the exhibition and told people that it was made from cigarette butts, everyone was shocked.
As some time passed, we thought of making some more things. We started manufacturing products like home decor items, paper, clothes etc. Soft toys and decorative items are made by the women here. They also get work sitting at home. Two and a half thousand waste collectors, 250 collection centres, more than 100 women are working with us.
Naman’s company provides employment to the women of the village. These women make products like soft toys sitting at home.
100 crore business after being in loss…?
‘Yes, this year we will do business worth Rs 100 crore. Our focus is not just on doing business, but on providing employment to people and working for the environment. When the demand for soft toys started decreasing in the market, we started making paper and denim clothes from cigarette butts.
Due to this, big corporate houses became our clients. This resulted in 3 times growth in annual revenue. Today there are more than 50 such corporate clients. Most of our business is in B2B i.e. Business to Business. Every day we are recycling around one and a half tonnes i.e. 70 lakh cigarette butts.
Currently it is only 2 percent of the total market. Every second, 3 thousand people smoke and throw away cigarettes in the country. In 6 years we have recycled more than 10 billion cigarette butts. India consumes 120 billion cigarettes annually. Now you can understand how big a number it is….
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Also read other news of this series…
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‘It’s about college days. Was in graduation. Since childhood, I was very interested in sports. Once a sports event took place in the college. Before the game started, I felt that everything would be great, it would be fun, but when the game started, I started thinking – it would be better if I had planned the entire game. The entire management was bad. After that
I started organizing all the sports events held in college. However, at that time it was not thought that one day it would become a company and would start doing an annual business of more than Rs 5 crore. Read the full news…
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‘We prepare different kits for children of all ages, so that their learning process is according to their age. Suppose a child is 3 years old, then he should collect such collections as 1,2,3…, A, B, C, D…, recognizing names from images of animals. With this we are doing business worth around Rs 50 crore. Read the full news…
