Human Maple gives a new life to cigarette butts, the search for investors Nana Bianca is underway
The startup participated in the Hubble acceleration program and today it manages a plant that produces cellulose acetate flakes with a thousand uses
There is a startup that invites us to be “maple humans”, taking the example of the curly maple that devours an incredible amount of smog (up to 3.8 tons of CO2 over twenty years). According to the founders of Human Maple, like maple, the human being must do his part to improve the relationship with the environment and the great challenge that the startup, just released from the Hubble acceleration program (created by Nana Bianca and Fondazione CR Firenze) has accepted is to transform cigarette butts into reusable material, specifically for padding.
Cigarette butts, a small but very insidious waste. Marco Boccia, co-founder of Human Maple, rattles off data that cannot fail to impress: according to ISTAT, 41.6 thousand tons of butts are left on the ground in Italy in a year. They are the main source of pollution of the seas, they serve 5 to 12 years for their decomposition and contain more than 40 toxic and polluting substances. The intuition of the three friends who founded Human Maple was to demonstrate that the cigarette butt can be considered plastic waste and be transformed, through a process that they have patented, into reusable material. A circular economy solution that is based on washing with organic solvents and that leads to the production of cellulose acetate flakes for the most diverse uses: they have become, for example, the padding of the cushions of the seats of the Foro Italico in Rome for recent sporting events from the Six Nations Rugby to the European Athletics Championships.
At the beginning of this story there are three boys from '98 from Castelfranco Emilia who often met together on waste collection days. Once the plastic gloves have to be collected around the mall, another time it is a matter of freeing the parks from cigarette butts. They meet again at the University of Modena, two of them attend Engineering and the other Economics, in addition to their sensitivity for the environment, they are united by the desire to do business. “I remember that time we were in front of the university and there was a little bird pecking on a cigarette butt, a scene that made us uncomfortable. I don't know if Human Maple was born that day, but we certainly started to think seriously about the possibilities we had of creating an eco-sustainable project,” says Marco.
The startup's commitment began with a campaign against the dispersion of butts, “Recycle me”: “We have designed a gamified interactive ashtray that asks to participate in a survey on various topics and thus encourages its use, we have distributed 200 throughout Italy, from the university environments of Luiss and Pisa to companies and shopping centers.”
The collection of the butts was accompanied by laboratory research on the characteristics of the butts: “70% consists of plastic, we quickly received authorization to open a processing site that can process up to 300 tons per year.”
“Thanks to Hubble, we were able to structure ourselves better - today there are seven of us working on the project - explains Boccia - to understand how to move in the world of startups and also how to start looking for investments. Our goal today is to close an investment round of 1.5 million euros to equip the site with the necessary machinery and increase cellulose production.”
