How can I reuse or recycle cigarette butts?
Three Beautiful Things‘ Clare sent over a link to a “grim but intriguing” story about someone making fashion items using old cigarette butts >> Cigarette Butt Haute Couture at Greenmuze.com.
When I clicked the link, I imagined it would be outfits along the lines of Herb Williams’ crayon sculptures but it seems to be more of a fabric reclamation project – which makes it considerably less grim in my opinion since fibre is fibre.
Obviously it would be better – for the environment and for the person’s health – if everyone reduced their consumption of them but in the meantime, is there anything else that can be done with them? Small scale reuse/recycle projects at home or are there any industrial recycling/reclaiming schemes?
(Sorry if the picture is making anyone else feel queasy btw!)
Ewwwww…. Knowing just some of the poisons in those things I can’t imagine wearing them, no matter how well they’re cleaned. They deserve to be treated like toxic waste, because that is what they are. I’m normally all for recycling and reusing things, but not these. Off to the landfill they go! And hopefully packed well enough that the nastier chemicals don’t leak out.
I do really feel for people who are addicted. I’ve seen how hard it is for some of my loved ones to try to quit even as higher prices keep eating away at already lean budgets and as they worry about what that new cough means. But at the very least, if you can not find a way to quit, please consider those new electric water vapor cigarettes. They *seem* like they’d be better for the environment and maybe slightly less bad for your health as well.
If you soak cigarette butts in water, you have a pesticide–it will not be absorbed by the plant, and will wash off. I use it as a last resort for pests that have no natural predators in our area. Adding a teeny bit of soap to make it stick to the bug, means it will clog their sphericles and suffocate them. Gruesome, but effective.
Arlee, how do you know that those pesticides won’t be absorbed by the plant and will be washed off? People thought that about other pesticides, but actual testing of pesticide loads has proved differently! (But warning, you’ll never eat a non-organic peach again if you read up on that.)
Using tobacco tea as a pesticide is very, very effective… and also quite dangerous for humans as well as insects. Human skin has pores and so do leaves- these are portals for absorption of anything placed on its surface that is small enough to get into them. You can fertilize plants through their leaves and you can absorb medications transdermally. The catch about tobacco tea is that it should never, ever be used on food crops, because it is absorbed by the plant (then you)- and if you’re an organic gardener, it’ll kill all of your beneficial insects along with the bad guys.The only acceptable use for tobacco tea is on ornamentals. Tobacco works on nerve tissue- it’s a central nervous system stimulant- if you do use this tea, you MUST make sure it is NEVER left where children and pets could get to it… it’s highly toxic… and if you do insist upon this remedy, wear gloves. Do not let it touch your skin otherwise you could make yourself quite ill, too. Lastly, I wouldn’t apply it on a windy day, either. Hope this helps you out.
I think I’ve solved the problem.
You guys are all thinking about natural, Indian-style tobbacco cigarettes as pesticides, I don’t know how strong the cigarettes there are, but the ones here are chock full of chemicals. I doubt you’d want all that anywhere near a plant you’ll be eating.
I’ve solved the problem of cigarette butt recycling. Please look at my website.
Remove the paper, soak the tobbacco in water, strain and use as a bug repellant in the garden.
DO NO put the tea talked about here in your soil or on your plants. If it were just tobacco, maybe but cigarette butts include arsenic, formaldehyde, chromium and lead. Indeed, there are 1,400 potential chemical additives. Toxicological data has shown that these chemicals from discarded cigarette butts are capable of leaching into surrounding water where they can harm aquatic life. Nicotine has been shown to be lethal to species of fish, crustaceans, zooplankton, and other aquatic organisms, as well as being a known insecticide. On top of leeching toxins, cigarette butts present an ingestion, choking and poisoning hazard to wildlife who mistake them for food, and because cigarette filters are composed of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic that can persist in the environment for long periods of time. Plastics of this sort have been found in the stomachs of sea turtles, fish, birds, whales and other marine creatures.
Four points:
1) If you look on any materials industrial database, contrary to Anti-Tobacco’s indoctrination, you will find that cellulose acetate IS biodegradable.
2) Nicotinic pesticide is approved for organic use. Nicotine is an allelochemical. ALL plants naturally produce them to ward off pests. Those from the Curare plant, a long, poisonous vine loaded with alkaloids, are used by Amazon natives to tip poison darts. How toxic are those from a carrot, apple, cauliflower……… ?
3) “Arsenic, formaldehyde, chromium and lead” – arsenic, chromium and lead and many other ‘nasties’, including polonium-210, are absorbed by ALL plants from the soil and the atmosphere. Formaldehyde is produced naturally by the human body.
4) “There are 1,400 potential chemical additives.” EVERYTHING is constituted from ‘chemicals’ – there are MILLIONS of them in the human body. The vast majority of these ‘chemicals’ are natural spices, herbs and oils or approved food additives. (Does everyone eat their food raw?)