India starts recycling of cigarette butts

Soft toys made from recycled fiber separated from cigarette filter tips are seen at a cigarette butts recycling factory in Noida, India on September 12, 2022. ANUSHREE FADNAVIS REUTERS NEW DELHI Sitting on the floor of a house in the outskirts of New Delhi, women smile and chat as they fill brightly colored toy bears with white stuffing made from a product more commonly found in a trash can.

The material is composed of cigarette stubs separated into fibers and cleaned and bleached after being gathered from the city streets where they had been discarded along with millions of others.

Businessman Naman Gupta is the brainchild of reprocessing them into a range of products including toys and pillows.

He said we started with 10 grams of fiber per day and now we are doing 1,000 kilogrammes a day. He said that we are able to recycle millions of cigarette butts from his factory in the outskirts of the Indian capital.

His workers separate out the butts' outer layer and tobacco, which are turned into recycled paper and compost powder.

Nearly 267 million people, nearly 30 percent of India's adult population, are tobacco users, and litter urban streets where general cleanliness standards are abysmally low, according to the World Health Organization.

Poonam, a worker in Gupta's factory who gave only her first name, said that working here helps keep the environment clean.