Every year smokers burn through 5.5 trillion cigarettes. Most are flicked away and end up littering the environment (up to two-thirds, according to some estimates). In fact, cigarette butts are the biggest ocean contaminant, not plastic straws, like you probably thought.
The bad news is that considerable number of people still think cigarette butts are biodegradable because the filters are cotton, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Cigarette filters are actually made of cellulose acetate, a synthetic compound derived from the acetylation of the plant substance cellulose and they capture over 4,000 chemicals that are introduced into the environment just by being tossed.
ENVIRO-SMOKE is an innovative packaging solution to avoid cigarette butts being scattered by inserting them into the embedded spaces, which also help keeping the unlit cigarettes undamaged. The package design is a combination of a fireproof ceramic fiber and a packet with two opposite flip up openings: one to pull the cigarettes out of the box and the other one to push the butts in the package. To avoid spreading and help eliminating the unpleasant odor while consuming the rest of the pack, a built-in cap, made from a folded piece of aluminum foil, covers the pushed-in cigarette butt. This cap also helps keep the unlit cigarettes fresh. While initially, the caps are at the bottom of the pack, after inserting the butts they are pushed inside the fireproof ceramic fiber to be fully extinguished if still burning.
The empty packet of ENVIRO-SMOKE is a kind of portable ashtray to help raise awareness about the harmful effects of tossing the cigarette butts in the urban or natural spaces.