How people profit of India's Garbage.by Rushitha Satla | 31-08-2022 22:58 |
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India generates more garbage than every country in the world besides China. And despite India's unhealthy air, many people still regularly smoke. These cigarete butts are being turned into teddy bear stuffing. Every year, people toss the ends of 4.5 trillion cigarettes. They often think the filters are just biodegradable cotton but what they actually are is a small hink of plastic infused with formaldehyde, nicotine and tons of other chemicals. Now one company in India has figured a way out to stuff these buds into toys. It also makes cushions and mosquito repellents. Could this model hold for literally the most littered thing on earth? And even if it's getting butts off of the streets and out of the water ways how safe is it? This startup is located in Noida, a city in northern part of India. Workers her screen almost 7 million cigarette butts with a metal detector every month. A network of 100s of people collect the butts off the streets of noida. A company called " Code Effort" pays them 300 rupees per kilo. Then the workers pull apart the filters, paper and tobacco. They hand off the tobacco to nearby farms to be composted. The paper gets dumped into the industrial grinderand treated with an organic binder. The sheets dry out in the sun, then get cut, packaged and sold in online or local shops. The paper with remained nicotine acts as a mosquito repellents when burnt. The plastic fibres from the filters go into the same grinder. They're then soaked in sterilizing chemicals for 24 hours, which leaves them looking like cotton. This cotton like material is studded into soft toys, cushions and mattresses. Isn't that amazing? And everything is Industrially certified. I Hope that other countries adapt to this green intitave to reduce this litter and make the world safer for the comming generations.
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