Cigarette butts

Cigarettes have never been so cool

This innovative material is a textile developed through the recycling of used cigarette butts, designed as a radical intervention in both waste management and material design. At its core, it represents a fusion of environmental consciousness and contemporary aesthetics, reframing a highly polluting and culturally charged object—the cigarette filter—into a valuable resource. The project aims to actively provoke the public, showing how recycling can truly be done with anything, even the smallest, most unpleasant-looking waste. Developed as part of a research-driven project that interrogates both mass consumption and the lifecycle of waste, the material leverages the overlooked properties of cellulose acetate, the primary component of cigarette filters, transforming it into a soft, workable fibre suitable for textile applications.

Cigarette butts are among the most commonly littered items in the world, with an estimated 4.5 trillion discarded annually. Despite their small size, they contribute significantly to global pollution due to their slow decomposition rate and the toxicity of their chemical residue. A significant issue connected with cigarette butt pollution is the socially accepted habit of throwing them on the ground, which makes the management of their end-of-life particularly difficult. The material presented here begins by addressing this issue at its root: collection and cleaning. The filters are gathered through urban clean-up campaigns, street collection points, and local waste partnerships. Once collected, they undergo a multi-step sanitisation process involving drying, mechanical shredding, and chemical neutralisation to remove tar, nicotine, and other harmful substances, while preserving the cellulose acetate structure.

The resulting fibre is roughly 0.5 to 1 cm in length and is not suitable for spinning techniques to obtain a yarn. Through experimentation with felting techniques, embroidery, and fabric manipulation, the designer has managed to create two nonwoven textiles that are surprisingly soft to the touch, flexible, and visually compelling. One is characterised by an embroidered pattern, which helps give a stronger structure to the felted fibres. The other recalls a shearling look, made of a sequence of fibres physically connected at the base.

More than a technical solution, the material also functions as a narrative device. Each fibre holds symbolic weight, referencing not only the environmental damage caused by tobacco waste but also the glamorisation and subsequent demonisation of smoking in modern culture. By reclaiming and aestheticising the cigarette filter, the project challenges viewers to reconsider ideas of pollution, value, and transformation. The title of the project—“Cigarettes Have Never Been So Cool”—is intended as a provocation, redirecting the perceived “coolness” of cigarettes toward the act of recycling them instead of smoking.

This material is not just about fabric—it is a provocation. It pushes boundaries between waste and value, dirt and beauty, vice and virtue. Through careful research, technical innovation, and poetic storytelling, it transforms a toxic global pollutant into a medium for change, questioning what we discard and what it might become. Choosing this specific waste (cigarette butts) and finding a way to recycle it—instead of water bottles, plastic bags, or coffee capsules—was a thoughtful decision to challenge the limits of what is considered recyclable. The idea was to choose the hardest option—something that seems completely unusable—and still prove that the material can be recovered.

Making process

The process begins with the collection of used cigarette butts, sourced directly from the streets, through friends, and with the support of the City of London waste facility, which stored discarded filters for the project. Once gathered, the filters undergo a general cleaning and sanitisation process to remove harmful substances while preserving the structural integrity of the cellulose acetate. The sanitised filters are then manually shredded into short fibres. Without the use of any binders or additives, the fibres are felted entirely by hand using needle techniques to form the base textile. In one version of the material, a machine-embroidered pattern is applied using cotton threads onto a backing made from recycled paper and cotton fabric, reinforcing and structuring the nonwoven surface. For the other version of the fabric, there is no felting or embroidery—just a careful vertical alignment of the fibres, which are then chemically bonded at the base with a small amount of acetone. No dyes, chemical treatments, or additional finishing processes are applied, keeping the material as raw and honest as possible.

Text submitted by the maker and edited by the Future Materials Bank. For information about reproducing (a part of) this text, please contact the maker.