Transforming the World: The Power of Design for Change

We know there are a lot of smokers out there and recently it hit my mind about how a person just throws off cigarette butts randomly anywhere after smoking.

I questioned myself, what happens to these butts. The ones lying on the streets, the ones thrown at a park, at the beaches, at the mountains and I can keep on counting places but that doesn’t really matter because no matter wherever we throw the butts - IT IS A MAJOR PROBLEM.

So, with this question in my mind that was keep on ringing, I did some research and the things I found does not sound good at all.

What is a cigarette made of?

Cigarettes, cigars, and pipe tobacco are made from dried tobacco leaves. Other substances are often added for flavor and to make smoking more pleasant. The smoke from these products is a complex mixture of chemicals produced by burning tobacco and its additives.

The above answer from google was pretty simple but not what I was looking for. I wanted to know what parts/components goes into making a cigarette. Let’s try it one more time.

This time I googled how is a cigarette made and came across this nice info graphic by FDA.

The above illustration shows all the particles that goes into making a cigarette and it also talks about the harmful substances that are inhaled but the major thing is about the cigarette butts.

Filters may be made from plastic cellulose acetate fiber, paper or activated charcoal (either as a cavity filter or embedded into the plastic cellulose acetate fibers). A research conducted by longwood university answers the question - So how long do cigarette butts take to degrade?

Various sources have stated that cigarette filters take 18 months to 10 years to degrade. It is safe to say that the cellulose acetate fibers in cigarette filters, like other plastics, are with us for some time after they are discarded.

So what is the right way to dispose off cigarette butts since we know how harmful it is to our environment?

Looking for the answer to this question, I came across a Toronto based company Terracycle.

Terracycle has a UNSMOKE Cigarette Free Recycling Program where they do the following -

Once collected, the cigarette waste is cleaned and separated by material type. The materials are recycled into raw formats that manufacturers use to make new products. The ash and tobacco are separated out and composted in a specialized process.

Smokers can enroll to this program which is free of cost since UNSMOKE has sponsored this national recycling program. Terracycle would collect the cigarette butts from individual homes and take it forward for processing it.

It is surprising that we don’t realise our own habits and are actually a problem ourselves to the environment. We talk a lot about social activism but we hesitate to change our own daily actions. Changing a habit is really tough but if we really care and push ourselves, we can actually solve this problem ourselves. The habit of throwing butts off anywhere needs to be changed and taken into consideration. Disposing off cigarette butts properly in bins or partnering with companies like Terracycle would be a good start. I’ll talk more about human habits and behavioral design later on.

Another perspective to think about this problem is from the Cigarette companies side. Before pointing out this whole habit of people throwing cigarette butts off at random places, we should really question how it all started. Had companies not identified the after effects of this impact while designing the cigarettes or manufacturing it?

I tried to design a cigarette box which would have a trash area at the bottom of the box itself. After designing, I was so excited to show it to others and then I heard a smoker saying you know how bad it smells if we decide to keep those butts within the box.

I honestly never thought about that because of lack of research and interviews. So I had to drop my fancy design concept I came up with for the cigarette box.

Coming back to cigarette manufacturers, why is the blame always put on users for the actions caused by the owner in the first place. Why didn’t they think about a consequence of this big would happen. I think this is where creative mind and designing for change comes in. Design for change should not be debated on losing more jobs rather focus on providing customers with products that does not affect our surroundings.