Turning Cigarette Butts Into Something Useful

Increasingly, researchers are realizing that cigarettes are as much an environmental problem as they are a health issue. Walk along a beach or around a busy city and you step on a lot of cigarette butts, thrown carelessly to the ground.

By one estimate, up to 6 trillion cigarette butts get flicked onto the ground and into the global environment every year. They’re one of the most common forms of the world’s litter, making up 25 to 50 percent of all trash collected from roads and streets. Some are mistaken as food by animals—and kids—and many end up polluting waterways. According to one test by the nonprofit Cigarette Butt Pollution Project, a butt soaked in a liter of water for 96 hours leaches out enough toxins to kill half of fish exposed to to the water.