Pick the butt up! Upcycling cigarette butts in road building material for sustainable road construction.

Abstract Roads are the lifeline of any nation. They are vital in passenger and freight transportation. Over usage and heavy loads put a lot of stress and strain on the health of the roads. On the other hand, cigarette butts (CB) are discarded unsafely after smoking and persist in nature as the cellulose acetate content in them, which is a microplastic, that does not decompose easily leading to a lot of littering, pollution and toxin dispersal in the environment. This proposed research utilizes the discarded cigarette butts into road construction material increasing its strength, durability and resistance against rutting while reducing costs and thermal conductivity to maintaining better surface temperatures. The utilization of discarded cigarette butts in road construction is a sustainable solution to not only strengthen the roads, but also reduce the negative environmental impact of improper cigarette butt disposal. In contrast to conventional bitumen roads, these roads possess superior toughness along with broad level durability. Multi-pronged approach to research was implemented here that included firstly a thorough literature review, conceiving the research design, conduct of research steps, evaluation of experimental results, and finally drawing conclusions from them. These experiments included retrieval of cellulose acetate from CBs, traditional physical and rheology tests, sieve analysis by Rothfuch’s technique and Marshall stability test. This paper aims to contribute to sustainable development goals by utilizing CBs to strengthen roads and clean the environment by eliminating this litter.