Most people view cigarettes as a health problem, but they are a huge environmental problem as well. The entire life cycle of a cigarette has an impact on the environment – from growing the tobacco to throwing away the butt. If tobacco vanished tomorrow, there would be many positive impacts on the environment. There would be a 5% reduction in global deforestation, because according to WHO, almost 500,000 acres a year are destroyed due to tobacco farming. There would be fewer pesticides and chemicals causing soil and water pollution. Perhaps most impressively, if tobacco vanished, so would the 845,000 tons of new toxic trash produced by cigarette butts each year.
Article 18 of the tobacco treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, seeks to protect the environment from the harms of tobacco. This relates closely to our other projects, and we believe that a healthy environment is yet another reason to end tobacco.
Please find some of our resources on this topic below:
- Monograph: The Economics of Tobacco and Tobacco Control
- How Tobacco Kills the Planet
- Hold the Tobacco Industry Responsible for Harming our Global Environment
- Environmental Webinar Recap
- Pesticides, Deforestation, and Pollution Problems from Tobacco
