Veolia Hauts-de-France, through its subsidiary Lilébo, and the Lille trade federation are associated with Tchao Mégot, a start-up which offers the first innovative technology for ecological cigarette butt decontamination in France. A first experiment lasts six months.
Goal : recycle the cigarette butts of Lille residents to transform them into textile material for down jackets. For six months, around thirty café and restaurant terraces in Lille offer their customers the opportunity to throw their cigarette butts into Tchao Mégot ashtrays, whose insulating material will be decontaminated and used for the padding of down jackets and later for insulating materials in the building sector. This simple and virtuous mechanism (collect, decontaminate and recycle) was able to bring together all the stakeholders around the project. “Because cleanliness is everyone’s business, we wish, with this operation, rally and raise awareness among traders, the people of Lille and the many tourists in the city this summer, in an eco-responsible approach that is easy to implement, and creator of lasting value”, explains Aurélie Lapidus, director of Veolia Hauts-de-France. From the height of three centimeters, the butt is in fact a waste that takes up a lot of space in public spaces. Every year, nearly 100,000 million cigarette butts are carelessly thrown into the streets of Lille, the scourge weighs between 20,000 and 25,000 tonnes in France. To facilitate the collection of this waste which takes two to five years to decompose, there are many initiatives : ashtrays in public bins are made available, citizen cleaning activities are also implemented such as plogging. However, it's not yet enough…
From throwing cigarette butts to sorting
To combat this problem of cleanliness and good citizenship, Lilébo and the Lille Commerce Federation launched this six-month experiment with the Picardy start-up Tchao Mégot. The objective is to capture as many cigarette butts as possible using ashtrays that promise local and innovative recycling.. This engaging communication should motivate smokers to preserve public space, or even to make a gap of a few meters so that the throwing of the cigarette butt turns into a sorting gesture. Thirty ashtrays have been deployed from July 20, 2022 until January 20, 2023. They are placed on terraces in the tourist center of Lille with volunteer traders. Once the Lille clearance sale and autumn have passed, the ashtrays will be collected to be deployed at the 2022 Christmas market. Bag collection is carried out weekly by the Federation teams.. Lilébo ensures the supply of ashtrays, massification of collected butts and their recycling cost.
A cigarette filter recycling process
Recycling is provided on the premises of Tchao Mégot, in Beauvais, in the Oise, where does cigarette butt clean-up take place?. The butt is cleaned to recover 99,7% of clean fiber and 0,3% toxic concentrates which are then extracted. The insulating material of the cigarette butt is decontaminated without water and without chemical solvents. It is then sent to spinning mills in Roubaix and Tourcoing and reworked for the manufacture of down jackets which will be intended for sale.. In the future, Tchao Mégot plans to manufacture insulation for the building using the same process. The company was created by Julien Paque, a young engineer from Lille, in 2020. “We are very happy to respond to Lilébo’s call. This concretizes the use of our solution and demonstrates our know-how”, declares Julien Paque.
