We know that, just like us, there are hundreds of other projects wanting to do more for the planet. We went to find out more about what drives them and what we can expect from their project. Once a week, one startup, one interview, five questions.
We spoke to Carla Portela, founder of Beat the Butt, the startup that was born to put an end to butts in the environment. The company created a sort of portable ashtray to help smokers not to discard butts onto the floor, but their work goes far beyond that.
Last year they went around the country picking up cigarette butts from the ground, in several cities, in an action they called the “chalk of shame” where they marked on the ground the places where they found cigarette butts.
What problem is your startup solving?
Every year, more than 4.5 billion cigarette butts end up in the environment. In Portugal alone there are 7 thousand per minute.
The problem with this small waste is huge, because cigarette butts are made of cellulose acetate (a plastic) and are therefore not biodegradable. Each cigarette butt can contain more than 4,000 different chemical compounds, of which more than 700 are highly toxic.
Beat the Butt has emerged to create the missing infrastructure. We are creating a selective collection system for cigarette butts, in order to remove them from the environment but also from the undifferentiated waste circuit. To this end, we are developing a strategy that combines a product (the Beat the Butt Case) that is nothing more than a tobacco pouch with an ashtray attached that has the characteristic of not leaking smells and can hold at least 20 butts. Thus, the smoker, when he finishes smoking that pack and goes to buy another one at the newspaper kiosks or gas stations, can dispose of all the butts in the selective collector that he will find for this purpose (the Re-butt Network). In this way, we create an intelligent selective collection system and can optimize the collection process.
Why start a business on the sustainability front?
Because it is not possible to achieve the longed-for eternal economic growth without bringing the area of sustainability to the table. It is urgent to make it a settled fact, we can no longer want the former and deny the latter.
What are the biggest obstacles of working in this area?
Ensure that the message gets across transparently without falling into greenwashing. Sustainability is much more about simplicity than replacing A with B, and this is undoubtedly a major hurdle to overcome, especially when many of us have grown up being encouraged to consume unreasonably.
What achievement are you most proud of as the leader of this startup?
To have started!
What is the next step?
Seek to implement a collection system at the municipal level and involve the actors responsible for waste management in the process.
Esta publicação também está disponível em:
Português (Portuguese (Portugal))
