VIDEO. He makes insulation materials from cigarette butts

“The goal is also to influence people, to show them that even waste is not necessarily very clean, that you can carry it on your person and, precisely, shake up the codes with that.” What if your down jacket was made from cigarette butts? This is what Julien Paque, founder and president of TchaoMegot, does. With his company, they collect cigarette butts to make insulating materials used in buildings or textiles. A desire to transform polluting and polluted waste into recycled products.

“The idea is to show people what happens to our waste”

In order to be able to reuse the cigarette butts, they extract the filters which they will clean up. “We’re really going to do it with a process that is quite innovative: we don’t use water and no toxic solvent. It’s done on a dry process that will last about an hour. (…) So that the material can be put back on the market, so that we can really talk about recycling, it is very important that we can clean it up. So that we can be sure that the down jackets, including the one I have on me, are not toxic, or that they do not pose a problem afterwards for the environment or human health”, explains Julien Paque.

The young 25-year-old entrepreneur is proud of his project and of going all the way. “When I arrive at work, of course, I feel proud, because we really started from scratch. It started from scratch on a piece of paper, so it’s pride, especially towards the team, too. Because at the start, I was on my own, I had a lot of things to do, now I can delegate, so it’s much less stressful, much cooler, and there’s a great atmosphere. So it’s joy, good humor and above all motivation to act humbly on this almost global issue. We never really know what happens to our waste and there, the idea is to show people what it becomes.”