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Published on Monday, June 12, 2017

What is Tobacco Doing to Our Environment?

[BEWARE]

What is Tobacco Doing to Our Environment?

We all know that smoking tobacco is terrible for our health. Lung cancer, stained teeth, brittle bones and prematurely aged skin are only some of the health concerns caused by tobacco. But how does tobacco affect the health of our environment? The World Health Organization has released a report showing that tobacco is not only dangerous for humans to smoke, it’s extremely harmful for our earth to grow.

 

Why Is Tobacco So Harmful?

The World Health Organization (WHO) report concluded that tobacco is causing massive harm to our environment due to the chemicals, energy and water used and pollution from growth, manufacturing, distribution, use and waste. The pollutants in our bodies and the effect of tobacco smoke are widely known but under-reported is the harm caused by the other facets of tobacco production.

 

The WHO report states, “From start to finish, the tobacco life cycle is an overwhelmingly polluting and damaging process.” WHO Assistant Director General Oleg Chestnov explains further, “Tobacco growing, the manufacture of tobacco products and their delivery to retailers all have severe environmental consequences, including deforestation, the use of fossil fuels and the dumping or leaking of waste products into the natural environment.”

 

The WHO report on tobacco harm was released on World No Tobacco Day in late May. Since a treaty signed in 2005, 179 countries have ratified an agreement to decrease the smoking of tobacco. The agreement calls for a ban on tobacco advertising, tobacco sponsorship and an increase in taxes on tobacco products. This is in direct response to the statistic that tobacco kills 7 million people worldwide every year.

 

Growing Tobacco & Tobacco Waste

Why is the tobacco life cycle so harmful? It starts from the growth stage as tobacco plants require many resources to thrive. Tobacco plants need large amounts of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides to grow. They also require lots of fumigants to further help control pests and disease outbreak.

 

The WHO report reveals that most of these chemicals are harmful to the environment and to the farmers’ health. In fact, some of the chemicals used in tobacco plant growth are banned in certain countries for their dangerous side effects.

 

Growing tobacco also increases deforestation. A lot of trees and wood are burned in order to cure tobacco leaves. In addition, some tobacco growing countries, like China and Zimbabwe, burn coal to cure tobacco leaves which harms our environment even more by increasing carbon dioxide emissions.

 

At the end of tobacco’s life cycle, there is an added harm put on the environment. And it’s something we see in our cities everyday. Tobacco cigarette butts are left on streets all over the world. The WHO report estimates that millions of kilograms of butts are discarded and this discarded tobacco waste is non-biodegradable. Tobacco waste has over 7000 toxic chemicals that poison our environment.

 

What Do Tobacco Companies Have to Say?

With all this research on the extremely harmful effects of tobacco not only on human health but also on our environment, it’s time to see what the tobacco companies have to say.

 

Three large tobacco companies, Japan Tobacco Inc, Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco, do release reports on their environmental resources and waste streams. However, WHO notes that their reports are limited and opaque.

 

China National Tobacco Company produces 44% of all cigarettes consumed globally. However, they do not publish their environmental data. WHO believes that all companies should comply with mandatory reporting on their environmental damage. The report concludes, “All producers should be required to compensate for the environmental harms caused by deforestation, water use, waste, etc. through offsets in order to ultimately reduce the long-term ecological harm their business causes."

 

The United Nations went one step further and called for the tobacco industry to provide financial contributions to offset their environmental damage. They are directly contributing to increased climate change and should be held responsible.


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Author: AThompson

Categories: Blogs, Consumer Products, Companies, Research

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