Smoking is a common pastime for many Indians. Approximately four percent or 56 million Indians are current cigarette smokers and just over half or 30 million are daily smokers. It is well known that smoking leads to significant health consequences but the environmental impact largely remains hidden from public knowledge.
That changed for Naman Gupta during his college days. He noticed that cigarette butts end up as cigarette waste. They can take many months if not years to decompose. “It was a turning point for me. I felt terrible that no one has ever spoken about this world’s biggest man-made contaminant”. Naman said. He questioned whether something could be done and with his brother Vipul’s help, he developed a process to upcycle cigarette butts to give them greater value than in their original form. Bringing this together under the banner of his company Code Effort, he now turns them into a variety of end products including soft toys, pillows, key chains and mosquito repellent.
Operations have grown significantly since beginning in 2018. “We started with [processing] 10 grams [of fibre per day] and now we are doing 1,000 kilograms”, Naman explained. He does this with the help of 2000 rag pickers for cigarette collection and over 100 women and local artisans to take apart, clean and then create the end products. All are paid for their work leading to, arguably, the creation of a new industry in the Indian economy.
However, Naman hasn’t stopped in his efforts to continue to invest and innovate his business. Not only are they aiming to increase how many cigarette butts they process from 30 tonnes to 45 tonnes monthly, they are looking at the possibility of creating higher end products such as air purifiers from the waste. With such applications, there may be no end to what can be reused and recycled from not only cigarette butts, but plastics and chemical waste as well.