Slovakia is turning old cigarette butts into asphalt roads

Why are cigarette butts a problem?

Filters from smoked cigarettes are toxic as they contain a significant amount of tar and other chemicals that harm their surrounding environment as they break down.

Of particular environmental concern are the thousands of chemicals and heavy metals contained in the tar as these can leach into soil and water sources, posing a threat to wild animals and plants.

Cellulose acetate, a type of plastic, is also present in cigarette butts. While disposable vapes and other e-cigarettes are likely worse offenders, traditional cigarettes also contribute to worsening plastic pollution.

As you can probably imagine, this chemical cocktail does little good for nature when it is improperly disposed of.

One study found that when cigarette butts are discarded in parks and gardens, the surrounding plants’ ability to germinate and grow to normal sizes is reduced by more than 20 percent.

Beneath the ground, the strength and size of plant roots are reduced by more than 50 percent.

When cigarettes end up in waterways, their effect on marine life is also immense. Experiments conducted in labs revealed that toxins leached from a single cigarette butt are capable of killing nearly 50 percent of fish exposed to them.

These studies are important, as they expose how something as small and common as a littered cigarette butt can have incredibly negative consequences for all living things on our planet.

How is the Bratislava project going?

During the pilot program, Ecobutt and SPAK-EKO recycled 300 kilograms of used cigarette butts in Slovakia’s capital every day.

After reaching the milestone of preventing a massive 10 million cigarette ends from becoming toxic litter, the venture was nominated for the SozialMarie Prize for Social Innovation in 2023.

This has led Bratislava’s local council to greenlight plans to install cigarette waste containers all across the city. Any waste collected from these containers will be then processed by Ecobutt and turned into local roads.

Though similar efforts to upcycle cigarette butts have popped up in other parts of the world, the initiative in Bratislava has occurred on a much wider scale thanks to local authorities and independent companies working together to achieve the goal.

Let’s hope we see similar initiatives popping up around the world.