Narrator: These cigarette butts are being turned into teddy bear stuffing.
Every year, people toss the ends of 4.5 trillion cigarettes.
They often think the filters are just biodegradable cotton,
no big deal.
But what they actually are
is a small hunk of plastic infused with formaldehyde,
nicotine, and tons of other chemicals.
Now, one company has figured out a way
to stuff used butts into, well, toys.
It also makes cushions and mosquito repellent.
Could this model hold the solution
for literally the most littered thing on earth?
And even if it's getting butts off of the streets
and out of the waterways, how safe is it?
We went to a city called Noida
in northern India to find out.
Workers here screen almost 7 million cigarette butts
with a metal detector every month.
Naman Gupta: This super scanner is used to detect
if the material has any metal items
or anything that is illegal
or that can harm our team members.
Narrator: A network of hundreds of people collect butts
off the streets of Noida.
A company called Code Effort pays them about 300 rupees per kilo.
That's just over $4.
Code Effort delivers the waste to the homes of contractors,
where they pull apart the filters, paper, and tobacco.
They hand off the tobacco to nearby farms to be composted.
The paper gets dumped into this industrial grinder
and treated with an organic binder.
The sheets dry out in the sun,
then get cut, packaged, and sold online or in local shops.
The paper and remaining nicotine
act as a mosquito repellent when burned.
Naman: For the mosquito repellents,
we have a brand name, NMOSQ,
that is an abbreviation for "no mosquito."
To use it, you just have to burn it from one end.
Narrator: The company is introducing scented versions
sometime in the next year.
The plastic fibers from the filters
go into the same grinder.
They're then soaked in sterilizing chemicals for 24 hours,
which leaves them looking like cotton.
The chemical mixture is a company secret,
but the processes involved in recycling the butts
have been independently certified as safe.
Naman: And this is the last stage
where the cotton is fluffed
and carded into the prescribed form.
And this is helpful to ensure that the final products
like soft toys, cushions, and key chains are very soft
and comfortable.
All these products are sold online and offline
through various mediums.
Narrator: Naman cofounded the company
with his brother in 2018 after he noticed
all the discarded cigarettes outside of a friend's house.
Naman: I am completely OK
with anybody consuming cigarettes or smoking.
But if they are unable
to dispose their cigarette waste wisely,
then that is a bit of a concern for me.
Narrator: The "code" in Code Effort
stands for "Conserve Our Depleting Environment."
Cigarette butts have been proven to inhibit plant growth
and destroy sea life.
They leach nicotine and heavy
metals into soil and water
and then take about a decade to degrade into microplastics
that scientists say are already a massive problem worldwide.
But cigarettes didn't even have filters
when they first became popular in the early 1900s.
In 1950, Viceroy became the first brand
to feature a filter made of plastic fibers.
Host: It's a Viceroy.
Notice how that deep-weave filter smooths out the taste?
Narrator: In 1957, the surgeon general published a report
linking cigarettes to lung cancer.
More cigarette companies rushed to add plastic filters.
Today, 98% of all cigarettes have them.
But the truth is that while filters do block some toxins,
they mostly just make it easier to inhale.
So far, Code Effort has recycled 300 million butts.
That's a tiny percentage of the cigarettes that are littered every year.
But it's a start.
And organizations all over the world
are working on solutions.
Some have proposed banning butts altogether.
In January, New York lawmakers introduced a bill
that would end the sale of cigarettes
with single-use filters by 2023.
San Francisco levied a tax on cigarettes
to fund cleanup efforts starting in 2010.
That same year, a company in San Diego called Greenbutts
developed a filter that decomposes in a few days.
At the moment, a Canadian tobacco company
sells the only cigarettes with Greenbutts in Ontario.
Announcer: A Greenbutt is an all-natural,
rapidly biodegradable cigarette filter
that breaks down in a matter of days.
Narrator: A pair of Dutch engineers worked with Microsoft
to build an AI-powered robot
that can identify and collect butts on beaches.
Announcer: BeachBot, or BB for short,
can spot cigarette butts, pluck them out of the sand,
and dispose of them in a safe bin.
Narrator: And in France,
the push to clean up cigarette litter is gaining traction.
Narrator: The government announced in July
that it will charge cigarette manufacturers
about 80 million euros a year to fund a cleanup effort.
And one theme park, a few hours from Paris,
trained half a dozen crows to do the job.
Narrator: Still, cleaning up after people litter
is only part of a solution.
Narrator: But so long as people
keep throwing their butts,
Naman says, he will keep going.
Naman: I have the hunger
to solve the problem of the society,
as well as boost the economy.
I'm just a human being who is trying
to better himself each and every day.