Team Herald
PANJIM: Founder of ButtRush Nirit Datta on Friday alleged the majority of cigarette recycling companies of India are corporate mafias who are using unfair means to recycle the cigarette butts. He disclosed, “The cigarette butts are harmful to the environment because they contain micro-plastic and not cotton as they claim.”
“The companies under the banner of recycling butt rush, manufacture soft toys claiming that the butt rush constitutes cotton,” he said.
“The fact is these cigarette butts are made up of cellulose acetate which is the form of micro-plastic containing heavy metals. The toys so manufactured are harmful to the children in the way that those playing with them will indirectly ingest the micro-plastic through breathing,” added Datta.
He said so far they have collected the trash from nine States and three Union Territories and are collecting around five lakh cigarette butts. The aim is to collect the butt rush waste present across India to raise the awareness about cigarette butt pollution to the environment.
“As an aggressive move, we will send certain amount of this butt rush to Research and Development Cell so that the R&D performs experiment and come up with the viable solution. Few of the trash collected will be sent to the waste management companies while rest will be couriered to the headquarters of tobacco industries with a note inside it.”
Datta said they don’t deal with butt rush recycling but only take up the cigarette butt collection drive to raise awareness among those who throw cigarette butt in open without disposing it off in a cigarette trash bin.
Further, he said, “The cigarette butt collection drive was started by him from Kolkata in April last year. He alleged that the recyclers across India don’t even recycle 0.5 per cent of the total cigarette butts.”
A 24-hour marathon was organised by the founder across Goa on Saturday wherein the volunteers walked across the streets to collect cigarette butts disposed of by smokers in an open environment.
