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Asphalt made of cigarette butts solves a number of great problems
The widespread consumption of cigarettes is not only damaging to an individual’s well being, but to the environment as well.
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The 6 trillion cigarettes produced each year generates over 1.2 million tons of cigarette butt litter, which take years to break down. (Shutterstock/File)
T
he widespread consumption of cigarettes is not only damaging to an individual’s well being, but to the environment as well.
The 6 trillion cigarettes produced each year generates over 1.2 million tons of cigarette butt litter, which take years to break down. In the meantime, as they litter the streets and other areas, the toxic chemicals that reside inside them cause even further damage, as they are slowly released into creeks, rivers and the ocean.
However, a team at the RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, may have just found a solution. Soon enough, instead of walking on a footpath covered with cigarette butt litter, you may be walking on them instead.
Led by Dr. Abbas Mohajerani, the team at RMIT have studied the possibility of mixing asphalt with cigarette butts to create an alternative for road construction that cleans up neglected litter as well. The results of their study demonstrates that this mixture is able to handle heavy traffic, whilst also reducing thermal conductivity. This means that not only could this act as a solution to a large waste problem, but it could also be useful in reducing the “urban heat island” effect that warms cities up to uncomfortable levels.
Read also: Indonesia suffers trillions in losses from cigarette smoking: Health Ministry
"I have been trying for many years to find sustainable and practical methods for solving the problem of cigarette butt pollution," said Mohajerani, who is a senior lecturer in RMIT’s School of Engineering, as reported by kompas.com. "Cigarette filters are designed to trap hundreds of toxic chemicals and the only ways to control these chemicals are either by effective encapsulation for the production of new lightweight aggregates or by the incorporation in fired clay bricks."
"In this research, we encapsulated the cigarette butts with bitumen and paraffin wax to lock in the chemicals and prevent any leaching from the asphalt concrete. The encapsulated cigarettes butts were mixed with hot asphalt mix for making samples," Mohajerani added. "This research shows that you can create a new construction material while ridding the environment of a huge waste problem."
This project is the result of five years of research, and the team’s work has been published in the journal of Construction and Building Materials. (tha/kes)
