There are art forms capable of being born from the most unthinkable ideas and objects. An American artist and a Chilean stylist have decided to transform those cigarette butts that often sadly lie abandoned along the sidewalks into real works of design. Over 4 trillion cigarette butts are thrown around the world a year, a truly unthinkable amount, which can be minimally recovered thanks to contemporary art and fashion.
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I am one of them plagues of streets and beaches. Fruit of the rudeness of many, but also inspiration for others. Are the cigarette butts that a American artist and a Chilean stylist they decided to transform rrecycling the so-called "butts" that too often remain abandoned on the sidewalks. In the world they are thrown over 4 trillion di cigarette butts a year, a truly unthinkable amount, which in a small part can be recovered thanks to contemporary art and fashion.
Tom Deininger has decided to reuse filters of the cigarettes consumed for the realization of paintings and sculptures. Observing his compositions from afar, it is difficult to recognize the use of waste materials in them; this aspect, at first, appears rather unlikely. This is the case, for example, of one of the works of which the author seems to be most proud. It is a rabbit, whose soft fur has been reproduced in appearance through the use of cigarette filters.
Using a similar technique, Tom Deininger reproduced the shell of a seashell. The work was born thanks to the butts he himself collected along streets and parking lots located near the seafront. Tom proved to be able to recognize the artistic potential of what appears to our eyes as nothing more than a waste to be thrown in the garbage.
It is important to remember that cigarette butts can remain in the place where they were abandoned as much as any object of plastic. chemical substances contained in them are able to prove harmful to animals, which could ingest them, and come to pollute our seas, if, as often happens, they are thrown into the golden sands of the beaches.
So then recovering at least a part of it can turn into a due act of respect towards our planet. From these premises was born the project of the stylist Alexandra Guerrero, who began to take into consideration the theme of fashion and waste materials on the occasion of her graduation thesis. Who would have thought that abandoned cigarette butts could have been a starting point for eco-fashion?
For the realization of the textile fibers, Alexandra personally took care of collect and clean up the butts. They are then dyed and spun together with more common fibers, after having undergone a further purification process, and can come to constitute the 10% of the composition of the final product, a percentage that the designer hopes to soon be able to increase.
Alexandra has so far achieved hats, ponchos, shrugs, sweaters and long dresses, for which the use of thousands of cigarette butts has proved necessary, which the designer hopes in the future to be able to receive directly from pubs, restaurants and other places, in order to have large quantities available, which will thus avoid to accumulate in landfills.
Marta Albè
