Filaret: Transforming Cigarette Butt Waste Into Useful Materials
Ines-Issa Villido is the founder of Filaret, a relatively young Estonian company with the bright idea of collecting and upcycling cigarette butt waste into new materials. The butts are transformed into plastic granules which can be turned into 3D printing filaments.
“We’re looking into ways to recycle all the other parts of cigarette butts as well. For example, the paper can be turned into new paper and the tobacco can go into composting. So, we recycle around 90% of cigarette butt waste,” says Ines-Issa.
To build up and spread the cigarette butt collection network, Filaret collaborate with local city governments to install permanent cigarette bins around cities. They rent out collection bins for use at various public events and have partnered up with Tallinn's waste management plant and sorting center, where people can drop off their cigarette butts for free.
All the collected cigarette butts then go to Filaret's upcycling facility.
But how did the idea of Filaret come to life?
“It’s been an organic process. I come from an art background and I chose cigarette butts as a material for artworks. Consequently, I wanted to gain deeper insight into the materials that are causing the waste problem. So, I studied plastic engineering at Tallinn’s TalTech University.
While working on my Master's thesis, I came up with the idea of exploring options for upcycling cigarette butt waste, specifically the filter part, which is made of plastic. These are the main source of the cigarette butt pollution problem, as they leach out the toxins they absorb during smoking. These filters then start breaking down into microplastic particles,” explained Ines-Issa.
She pointed out that, although cigarette butts are small, they’re a huge problem for the environment. As mentioned, they contain microplastics and toxins – and just one single cigarette butt can poison up to 1000 liters of water!
“Before we upcycle cigarette butts we pull the toxins out from them as well. We’re exploring different ways to find the most environmentally friendly option for it. Hopefully, along with our activities, we’re able to raise more awareness of the problem as well, so that smokers wouldn’t flick the cigarette butts into nature or on to the streets so easily," said Ines-Issa.
It’s not been an entirely obstacle-free process though! Ines-Issa said that competing with other materials that have been established already for some time is for sure one difficulty. In order to be successful, they need to bring prices down as much as possible.
She says that this is definitely the biggest obstacle; being competitive with other bioplastics in the future. And, of course, as said before, building up the cigarette butt collection network to prevent them from being disposed of in nature takes time.
They already have partners, and an effective system, however it takes time to change perspectives, to demonstrate that cigarette butts can also be collected in a systematic way.
But, of course, there are so many other materials that cause problems for the environment.
“We’re looking into textile waste in the future. There are lots of possibilities on how to upcycle textiles for example,” said Ines-Issa.
Ines-Issa says that, although they’re a young company, they’ve already done some calculations to find out their own environmental footprint.
One question remains though – why not work in the direction that cigarettes wouldn’t be allowed at all, precisely because they are so poisonous?
Ines-Issa says that, yes, they get that question a lot, but that’s a totally different kind of scope to deal with – there’s plenty of legislation to deal with and it’s up to governments to address.
“You can't change smokers’ habits so quickly; it takes time. Our company wants to establish that cigarette butts are a different category of waste, so that it would be separately collected, thus allowing us more easily to give new life to them.”
The interesting lesson for Ines-Issa has been how people understand (or don’t!) what Filaret do and the reactions to their work. She’s happy to see how many people cheer for their activities, however there are some who don’t understand at all that cigarette butt waste is a real problem.
The sheer volume of that problem can be highlighted in two simple facts – “Estonia produces around 300 tons of cigarette butt waste annually. This is equal to about 100 truck loads full of cigarette butts – that’s a huge amount of material!” concludes Ines-Issa.
There’s clearly still a lot of work ahead!
Filaret website:
https://www.filaret3d.com/
