IMEKO - Our technology is innovation in cigarette butt recycling

Pioneers in generating a technological solution to the problem of cigarette butts

Through a chemical process, completely sustainable from its design, we are able to remove all the toxic substances contained in cigarette butts and recover the valuable cellulose acetate from which the filter is made.

What is cellulose acetate?

It is the plastic from which the cigarette filter is made. It is a highly versatile and valuable thermoplastic, with which even sunglasses frames are made. In the cigarette butts this material is contaminated, but our process recovers it completely clean.

We take recovered acetate and transform it into the most incredible raw material for the sustainable products industry

What happens to these toxins?

Thousands of toxic compounds are trapped in cigarette butts. We are talking about nicotine, derivatives of tar, heavy metals, polycyclic aromatics, among others.
At IMEKO we are the first in the world to treat this waste as dangerous. We take care of sending them to specialized companies that treat hazardous waste, inerting it and permanently eliminating it from the environment.