Turning cigarette waste into a life-saving solution.

In the Philippines, mosquito-borne diseases like Dengue, Malaria, and Zika affect over 200,000 people yearly, but pest control solutions remain costly. Partnering with the City of Taguig, we created NICO, an ashtray that extracts nicotine from discarded cigarette butts and repurposes it into a free, organic mosquito pesticide—turning waste into a weapon against disease.

How it works: Smokers dispose of their cigarette butts in NICO, where a filtration system extracts nicotine. This is then converted into an organic pesticide and distributed to local communities.

Deployed in smoking areas, NICO helped protect over 94,000 people in schools and neighborhoods. With its success, the project is set to expand to 26 more communities, proving that even waste can be transformed into something life-saving.