It is a well-known fact that smoking is injurious to health but did you know that cigarettes are the most littered item on Earth? Across the world about 4.5 trillion cigarettes are discarded each year with more than 100 billion cigarettes being dumped, on the streets and elsewhere, in India alone. While most of the cigarette disintegrates when burnt, what’s left behind are the cigarette butts.
These contain filters that are made of a plastic called cellulose acetate which takes years to degrade, and as they do, microplastics are released into the soil and oceans. A recent study found that one cigarette butt in a liter of water kills half the fish. On a mission to combat this pollution two friends from Noida, Naman Gupta, a Delhi University graduate and Vishal Kanet, an engineer, founded Code, a company that recycles cigarette waste into different products.
It was after a party at a friend’s house in 2016 when Vishal and Naman came up with the idea for the startup. Shocked by…