Text: Steamed buns
Editor|Jiang Yuchi
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preface
Smokers occupy a very large proportion in today's society, and it can be said that where there is society, there are smokers, but you would never think that there is a huge wealth hidden in the cigarette butts smoked by smokers.
An India guy found the business opportunity, and successfully counterattacked and became a rich man by picking up the leftover cigarette butts that everyone smoked, and the profit was 400,000 a year, which made countless people red.
Cigarette butts are very common in life, so why is there such a big profit in them? With such a large number of smokers in the mainland, are there any companies in the mainland that recycle cigarette butts?
Business opportunities in cigarette butts
Smoking is harmful to health, but smoking can make people retaliate, of course, not to do tobacco business, but to use cigarette butts, to be precise, with cigarette filters.
When cigarettes first appeared, there was actually no filter, which led to a lot of tar and nicotine inhaled into the body when smoking, which would cause great harm to the human body.
In order to solve this problem, a Hungary pioneered the filter to block the inhalation of some harmful substances, and after many updates, it has formed a common filter now.
Most of the current filters are made of cellulose acetate material, which is widely used in clothing, poker, plates and other fields, which shows that the application value of this material in today's society is very large.
When a Indian guy Gupta was at a party, he found that the two ashtrays at the party were filled in just a few hours, which couldn't help but remind him of many questions, and with questions to find answers, he found that cigarette butts were rich in cellulose acetate.
So he and a friend who does photography, Kanet, teamed up to experiment with the use of sophisticated chemistry to extract cellulose acetate from cigarette butts, and in 2016, the two dared to set up a cigarette waste management company to make new products from recycled cigarette butts.
In order to attract everyone's enthusiasm for recycling cigarette butts, they used a high price of $250 per kilogram to recycle cigarette butts, but only received 10 grams of cigarette butts in the first month of opening, which greatly damaged their self-confidence.
After that, the company was supported by other companies, and business slowly improved, but Kanet left the company a year later, leaving Gupta alone to continue to operate.
Today's cigarette waste management company has cooperated with more than 20 suppliers in India, with 2,500 kg of dry cigarette butts guaranteed in a month, and a net profit of hundreds of thousands a year.
Source: 08.05.2019 Tobacco Online India startups use discarded cigarette butts
I believe that many people now want to invest in the entrepreneurial road of recycling cigarette butts, but they have to pour a basin of cold water on everyone, because the business opportunities in cigarette butts have long been favored by many enterprises in the mainland.
Cigarette butt recycling
In last month's statistics, the number of smokers in China has reached 350 million, and the number of smokers in the world is only more than 1 billion, and the number of smokers in the mainland alone accounts for more than one-third.
With such a large number of smokers, there are naturally a lot of cigarette butts thrown away, and there are many companies in the mainland that recycle cigarette butts, bringing the commercial value of cigarette butts to the extreme.
In Anhui, the recycling price of a kilogram of cigarette butts is 60-80 yuan per kilogram, which is more expensive than meat, which shows how much profit is contained in this small cigarette butt.
A company in Qingdao recycles cigarette butts at a price of 6 yuan per kilogram, turns waste into treasure, fully extracts acetate fiber, nicotine, solanesol and other substances in cigarette butts, and then applies them to the production of medical and health equipment, pesticides and other commodities.
They are very strict about the recycling standards of cigarette butts, and the staff said that cigarette butts that have been scorched by fire, or have become moldy when they are damp, will not be accepted, as long as the cigarette butts are dried, one is convenient for processing, and the other is to ensure quality.
The staff also said that these cigarette butts were eventually exported to Japan, and the price was about 12 yuan per kilogram, so it seems that this business is still very profitable.
More than 20 years ago, a professor in Brazil made paper from cigarette butts and obtained a patent for "cigarette butt paper", and a doctor in Australia invented "cigarette butt asphalt", which is used in urban buildings to effectively alleviate the heat island effect in cities
A company in United States collected cigarette butts from all over the world to make various commercial products, and was successfully shortlisted for "Forbes", which shows that the commercial value of cigarette butts is still rising, but the most meaningful thing about recycling cigarette butts is the environmental protection value.
Source:2022-07-25 36kr The cigarette butts you throw away are used by others to make a fortune
Small cigarette butts are a big hazard
Smokers discard almost 845,000 tons of cigarette butts a year, including 7,800 tons of harmful chemicals, which are unlikely to be naturally degraded and cause huge environmental problems if not handled properly.
Cigarette butts produce a lot of microplastics, so they are classified as plastic waste in garbage sorting, and because of this, cigarette butts have become the largest amount of plastic waste in the world.
It is no exaggeration to say that there must be cigarette butts wherever there is human activity, but you would never expect that there is also a large amount of cigarette butt garbage in the deep and secluded seabed.
A marine biologist in Canada dived to the bottom of the sea to clean up plastic waste and found a large number of cigarette butts on the bottom of the sea, and a manager exclaimed, "The most common is cigarette butts, which can be said to be everywhere".
The microplastics, heavy metals and other chemicals decomposed from cigarette butts are very toxic, and they will be washed away by seawater in the ocean and easily eaten by microorganisms in the sea, and the spread of the food chain will eventually affect people themselves.
More than 60 countries have formed the Clean Seas Campaign to address the negative impact of microplastics in filters on health and the environment.
At present, the harm of cigarette butts to the environment has been widely popularized, and many smokers have only begun to take a sip when they see the garbage can, but there are still some unqualified people who litter cigarette butts, causing mountain fires and causing huge environmental harm.
Therefore, environmental protection should continue to publicize, popularize the relevant knowledge and hazards of environmental protection to the public, and avoid adverse effects and irreparable losses caused by man-made accidents on nature.
Source: 2 February 2022 UN News Microplastics in tiny cigarette butts: a huge environmental and health hazard
Conclusion
Opportunities are always reserved for those who are prepared, and the India guy relies on his business acumen to discover the value contained in cigarette butts, which is the foundation of his success, if you can find the gap in the needs of life, maybe you can also find new business opportunities from it.
Over the years, many countries have actively recycled discarded cigarette butts, giving full play to the hidden value of cigarette butts, which not only protects the environment, but also brings economic income to the country, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone.
Environmental protection has always been the premise of our development, the development of the mainland has always put environmental protection issues in the first place, cigarette butt recycling greatly reduces the harm of cigarette butts to the environment, is the need for our sustainable development, but also our effective measures to protect the great rivers and mountains.
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