A team at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, led by Dr Abbas Mohajerani has demonstrated that bricks with as little as 1 per cent cigarette butts added to them can cut brick production energy costs by around 58%. Yes, you read correctly - cigarette butts reduce the energy required to fire bricks.For Mohajerani, a senior lecturer in RMIT’s School of Engineering, this achievement is a life's work and he said: “I have been dreaming for many years about finding sustainable and practical methods for solving the problem of cigarette butt pollution for some time." THE PROBLEM WITH CIGARETTE BUTTS IS THAT THEY HAVE AN INCREDIBLY HIGH LITTER POTENTIAL WITH A WHOPPING 1/3 OF ALL BUTTS FROM THE 25 BILLION FILTERED CIGARETTES WE SMOKE IN AUSTRALIA ALONE, END UP ON THE GROUND. THIS MEANS THAT HEAVY METALS SUCH AS ARSENIC, CHROMIUM, NICKEL AND CADMIUM TRAPPED IN THE FILTERS LEACH INTO SOIL AND WATERWAYS.Because heavy metals and other pollutants in cigarette butts are trapped and immobilized in the bricks during the firing process, cigarette butts can be placed in bricks without any fear of leaching or contamination. The more butts that are incorporated into the brick firing process, the energy cost decreases further and further. Better still, the more butts in a brick, the lighter it is and the better it's insulation qualities.Mohajerani is optimistic that his new Butt Bricks can effectively solve a global litter problem. But please don't swing by RMIT and drop off your cigarette butts just yet. You can collect and safely recycle your butts by simply getting a purpose built prepaid packet from Australia Post and sending them off to companies like Terracycle, who also work with different companies to recycle all kinds of products.Photo: RMIT / Terracycle | The Butt-Brick research has been published in the Journal of Waste Management (Elsevier)