Jean Zeid 06:53, March 18, 2024
Every morning, Jean Zeid delivers the best in terms of innovation.
This Monday, he is interested in the startup Puffcycling which manufactures portable chargers from disposable electronic cigarette batteries.
This Monday morning, we're talking about recycling and vaping.
There are world days for everything.
Today is Recycling Day, established in 1994 in the United States.
Its main objective was to promote the consumption of products made from recycled materials.
In 2024, recycling, there is something for all tastes and all sauces.
In Switzerland, the start-up Puffcycling, a company from Valais, creates portable chargers from batteries of what are called “puffs”, disposable electronic cigarettes.
Why them?
Ulcerated by the ecological waste of disposable electronic cigarettes, the students behind this company looked for a solution.
Why the waste?
Because batteries are perfectly viable when the single-use e-cigarette goes to a recycling center in the electronic waste section at best, but at worst and more generally, they end up in trash cans, or even in nature or the gutter.
To give you an idea, lithium batteries in puffs are used for 3 to 4 days before being thrown away, although they have a lifespan of 2 to 3 years.
Hence the idea of these few students, Andreas, Alicia, Véronica, Maxime and Duygu, to create disposable electronic cigarettes based on the recycling of batteries.
Once they graduated, they decided to begin an entrepreneurial adventure by creating Puffcycling.
Concretely, how do they give them a second life?
If upcycling consists of recovering components and raw materials which have completed their first cycle of use by transforming them into another product, the idea of Puffcycling is to recover used puff batteries to transform them into portable chargers for smartphones .
The company has started to establish partnerships with points of sale for disposable electronic cigarettes.
For the wind points, it's very beneficial, they no longer have to worry about recycling the puffs.
Then, it is the dismantling and recycling phase of the plastic, aluminum, cables and batteries.
These are tested then integrated into a case which will serve as a smartphone battery after a quality control and test phase in order to meet market standards and requirements.
More than 5,000 puffs have already been collected by Puffcycling.
The former students are on their 3rd prototype.
A smartphone battery corresponds to 9 puff batteries.
If the tests are conclusive, marketing will be considered.