Sorting out the Butts

There is no doubt cigarette butts are very problematic. Without a lot to say about how bad they are the idea is to find ways of cleaning them up. Physically they become one with the ground and difficult to isolate and retrieve. Millions of these 'bugs' litter my neighborhood and I want to see if I can make a difference.  I have an idea to use a backpack vacuum / cyclonic filter to pull the butts and leave the rest.

Obviously a vacuum system is needed... rechargable, portable (backpack), with sufficient air flow to get these butts moving into a hopper. The devices are all relatively expensive based on charge rates and run times. These machines will have longer duty cycles when battery technology improves. 

The big problem is the cyclonic filter system.  Certainly I can vacuum up a whole bunch of crap along with the butts... but, I want the butts to find a path out of the eqipment without getting mixed into the rock and sand. The cyclonic filter does a seperation of dirt and dust in the air by slinging it around the cone in a vacuum.  I may need a multi stage filter to pull the butts from the final stage.

The 'lab' set up here to the left shows the powder being pulled through the cyclonic filter which is moving the powder  while allowing relatively clean air to flow to the vacuum source.

Where I am few beaches are sand. Most of the shore is volcanic and has thousands of fissures as in the photo here. Most of those fissures are full of butts as is shown here. Portable vacuum would handle most of it. Pretty disgusting to see all that.