Call it their helplessness, reluctance or the plain denial to shun the abhorrent habit; it makes smokers despicable to others (who do not smoke). Besides, it is cancerous to environment. However, the London Borough at Harrow hopes to lend some respectability to smokers as it suggests that cigarette butts can be recycled into rolls of home insulation. Well, to make them usable, they are first sterilized, then disintegrated, and finally compressed into insulation pillows.
Harrow being the second largest recycler in London recycles 44 percent of these butts. It allows the Brent Housing Partnership to think about insulating 13,000 homes in the borough. No doubt, they need funding for that and have already applied for it.
Anyhow, the insulation process involves the following steps:
1. Cigarette butts pass through the autoclave that sterilizes the cigarettes by subjecting them to 45 minutes of high pressure steam at 121°C or more. It kills pathogens and viruses at a high rate.
2. The process disintegrates paper and other fibrous material into a mass of fibers.
4. Finally, it is packed into “pillows” which are stacked together in lofts to provide insulation.
Via: Evening Standard