Procesing of cigarette buds. (source: Courtesy of OLO)
The municipal waste management company Odvoz a Likvidácia Odpadu (OLO) will collect cigarette butts in special containers at events in Bratislava as of 2024. The waste from conventional and electronic cigarettes will then be processed into asphalt for the roads.
The pilot collection was launched at Christmas markets.
“If visitors to a festival, run, market or other urban event throw cigarette butts into a special container, they will contribute not only to a cleaner environment, but to the material recovery of this type of waste,” said Martina Čechová, manager of the circular economy at OLO in the press release.
Apart from OLO, the Bratislava City Council, the company SPAK-EKO and the startup EcoButt are behind the initiative.
More than half of cigarette butts end up on the ground. Cigarette filters contain toxic and carcinogenic substances that contaminate soil, water and the ecosystem of plants and animals as a result of rainfall. Cigarette butt filters can be recycled into fibres that can be used as an admixture for asphalt roads. The first road made from recycled cigarette butts was created in Žiar nad Hronom in central Slovakia, the first of its kind in the world. It was made by EcoButt.
Both cigarette butts from regular cigarettes and those from heated tobacco devices should be thrown in cigarette butt collection bins. Liquid refills for e-cigarettes belong in black mixed municipal waste bins. Both disposable and rechargeable packaging from e-cigarettes should be taken as e-waste to the collection yard, said Miroslav Jurkovič, CEO of SPAK-EKO.
