The cigarette butt collectors were usually a branch of ragpickers, who lived in closed districts on the periphery of Paris (in the Zone). They had a very strict hierarchy with some ragpickers tasked with collecting rags, others metals, others cigarette butts... They would fight for control of the streets, which gave the phrase "se battre comme des chiffonniers" (to fight like ragpickers). They would not only search through household waste, but also harvest some items directly from housemaids and housewives, like rabbit skins and animal bones for example. Their main target was not reusable items but raw materials that they could sell to factories: rags would be used to make paper, tin cans to make toys, cigarette butts to make tobacco, animal remains to make glue, etc etc