Akash Dwivedi
BIPANCHI BORAH
RAHUL SETIA
Pratibha Modi
Ipsita Dixit
Smruti Kamath
Goa Institute of Management
Divya Singhal
Keep this story going! Share below!
Code Effort Private Limited is India's first cigarette waste recycling company. It recycles each component of cigarette waste generated either domestically or industrially and makes a range of products like paper bags, pillows, soft toys, etc. It uses each and part of cigarette butts to manufacture their products and they are expanding their range of products to make air purifier, eye wears, etc. They work closely with major cigarette companies and collect cigarette buds from various collection points (suppliers, rag pickers). Operations are in 15 states, which cover 250 districts, and collections come from Value bins (VBins), which is a registered trademark of the organization. These value bins are provided in shops and cafés to only collect cigarette buds and to collect the waste at its source. After collection, toxins are removed from the buds, then the buds are recycled.
The business also provides employment opportunities and skill development to families of nearby areas, especially women. The business has helped women become self-reliant and financially independent. By implementing these unique and innovative practices, the company is contributing towards SDG 13, 12, 8, 5 and 3.
The innovation works in the 3P model which means:
Procurement – Ensures that cigarette buds don't end up in a landfill, instead, are collected recycled, and rid of toxins.
Processing – Converts waste into final products
Production – Makes final products out of the recycled buds
They are working on climate action (Goal 13) by recycling cigarette buds. There are multiple stakeholders involved: suppliers who provide them with the buds, CODE Efforts that provides employment opportunities to those who assist in obtaining buds from various parts of India, and the company's employees, who handle and recycle the waste. Through this process, CODE Effort is not only turning waste, which is considered a non-profitable business, into a for-profit one, but it is also making sustainable decisions along the way, such as providing employment opportunities in the nearby area of its recycling unit. The company employs local women and artisans by providing them financial stability and is helping to build a stable community. This helps increase economic growth opportunities in and around its plant area. The valuable customers are other stakeholders who buy the recycled products.
Quality Products made from wastes
The founder of the company, Mr. Naman Gupta, states that since the inception of the company in 2018, he has had the opportunity to interact with a multitude of people, which he perceives as acting as motivation for him. The platform provides him a chance to meet new people, and as an entrepreneur, he prefers to be a learner rather than a teacher.
He shares the ideology that being a learner would provide him with a larger knowledge curve than being a teacher. As it is rightly said that, “A listener is more knowledgeable than a speaker,” he firmly believes that being on the other end of the spectrum and learning while listening to people would provide him with a much broader view of things.
His main motivation, he emphasis, that makes him run and reach new heights is the motivation that comes from people.
There are various permutations that make it difficult to separate paper from buds. To get around this, he hired 50 females from a nearby village.
He conveniently provided them with the opportunity to work part-time, allowing them to make ends meet while also balancing their household chores.
While describing a real-life incident, he says that one of the employed females from the batch had five children. She was able to get one of her children married by doing this part-time work. This, he says, gives him the highest levels of motivation.
He feels a sense of pride and belongingness knowing that his company, “Code Effort,” helps those in need who are unable to find such opportunities. These loyalists have also displayed solidarity and stood with the company during uncertain times like COVID.
The familial feeling encourages the founder to thrive more and more. Educational institutes like the Goa Institute of Management and other entities, which have broadly helped them convert fibers from buds into fabrics, also act as catalysts for their motivation. To sum up, every little effort from the associated people and Institutions garners them with the urge to still do good and make the world a better place to live in.
Mr. Naman Gupta narrates a childhood saga in which he used to observe an army veteran from his balcony. The veteran, he says, sat on his own balcony during the mornings with a tea cup in one hand and a cigarette in another. And this, he points out, was his first interaction with smokers. Later, in his college life, he came across a wide number of people who used to smoke. This made him curious about what happens to buds after smoking.
Around 2017, when he was in his final year of graduation, he was keen on doing something which was related to managing waste generated from cigarette buds.
Future plans - by 2025 the company plans to recycle and increase the quantity from 45 tonnes of waste to 300 tonnes of waste. The company sees itself working closely with established companies like that of ITS, PMI, Godfrey Philips and VST. They foresee themselves working with them on ERP (Extended Producer’s Liability) to come up with sustainable practices. They plan on expanding other sections of recycling single use plastic in terms of cigarette buds to other sectors as well. Hence they are planning to increase their product catalogue.
Since the buds are made out of single use plastic, before the invention of EPR it had nothing to do with producers. Now it has become a mandate for companies to manage the waste generated by their products in the after cycles.
The long term goals include increasing the product catalogue by venturing into textiles, air purifiers, eye frames, sound-absorbing materials, and semi-conductors.
The material that is being used in semiconductors is the same as the one being used in buds, and if the integration is successful, it shall open doors to a multi-billion dollar industry. This will positively impact the Indian economy and make India proud, as Code Effort is a hundred percent Indian origin company.
Code Effort Private Limited, which was founded in 2018, procures cigarette butts from more than 250 cities in 15 states. For processing these wastes, they developed the 3 P model, which stands for procure, process, and produce. They process these cigarette butts and manufacture or produce a variety of products like paper bags, soft toys, pillows, etc. The whole plant is based in Nagli village, which is near Noida, a city in Uttar Pradesh, and is spread over 10,000 square feet.
These cigarette butts consist of fibers, paper, and micro-plastics, which are not biodegradable. They generate their revenues from selling end products made from cigarette butts, lending their technology to other companies outside India like Nepal, Vietnam, Bangladesh and by selling their courses on how to achieve sustainability through these wastes.
They provide employment to people who are not very skilled and provide skills to unskilled labor which helps them in processing their waste. They also employ those ladies in whose homes it is a taboo to work outside their houses. They provide VBins (Value Bins) to private sectors for cigarette waste collection so that it is easier for them to segregate cigarette waste from other waste materials.
Recently they have been working very closely with cigarette companies like ITC, PMI, GPIL, VST Industries for their EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) and helping them in making their company to take initiative in sustainability development. They are also planning to increase their product catalogue which will include air purifiers, eye frames, sound absorbing products, etc.
They are also in talks with The Entrepreneurship Club of IIT Kanpur and are planning to develop in collaboration with IIT Kanpur the alternatives for semiconductors manufacturing which will be a huge boom in the technology because the material that is being used in making these semiconductors and capacitors is the same fibre materials that are being used in making cigarette butt. This can help in the reducing the scarcity of semiconductors in the technology market.
Every year, more than 100 billion cigarette butts are discarded in Indian landfills. It's a little-known truth that cigarette filters are composed of cellulose acetate, a type of non-biodegradable material that takes nearly ten years to degrade. As a result, cigarette waste is not only harmful to one's health, but it also poses a significant threat to the environment. This innovation, therefore solves not only a very important but also undermined issue.
The founder says that the idea struck him while attending a small party. He looked at the amount of cigarette stuff disposed and imagined how humongous the number would be if the whole country is considered. He then researched to find that the stubs were made out of cotton. The process of recycling the largest waste category in India is as follows: cigarettes butts are separated into three parts -Polymer, Leftover tobacco & paper, and fly ash.
The polymer is used in the air purification system. The organic leftover tobacco and paper are recycled into organic manure, and the fly ash is sent to the storage.
He says, each component of the cigarette is recycled so that the end-product is safe to use. Even the water generated throughout the process is reduced to a carbon footprint. The company creates various products from recycled cigarette butts such as - mosquito repellent, key chains, cushions.
This initiative, along with helping the environment, is also educating society about how big of an issue cigarette butts really are. By creating products from recycled waste, it also creates value for consumers who purchase the products. Additionally, it encourages recycling as a way of life that will further enlighten the masses on the importance of sustainable development and importance of being environmentally conscious. Their efforts have earned them a place in the Limca Book of Records.
Get stories of positive business innovations from around the world delivered right to your inbox.
Naman Gupta, Founder
