Tobacco Industry Damages the Environment

The tobacco industry is a far greater threat than many realise as it is one of the world’s biggest polluters, from leaving mountains of waste to driving global warming, the World Health Organization have warned in a new report. 

The WHO report Tobacco: Poisoning Our Planet, published on Tuesday to coincide with World No Tobacco Day, outlined new findings on the extent to which the tobacco industry is harming both the environment and human health. It found that the tobacco industry is responsible for the annual loss of eight million human lives, 600 million trees, 200,000 hectares of land, 22 billion tonnes of water, and releases about 84 million tonnes of CO2 into the Earth’s atmosphere! 

Ruediger Krech (right), WHO director of health promotion even declared the industry as “one of the biggest polluters that we know of”. 

And that “tobacco products are the most littered item on the planet, containing over 7,000 toxic chemicals, which leech into our environment when discarded”, Krech said. 

He pointed out that each one of the estimated 4.5 trillion cigarette butts that end up in our oceans, rivers, sidewalks and beaches every year can pollute 100 litres of water. 

In addition, products like cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes also contribute significantly to the global build-up of plastic pollution, WHO warned. 

Cigarette filters contain microplastics – the tiny fragments that have been detected in every ocean and even at the bottom of the world’s deepest trench – and make up the second-highest form of plastic pollution worldwide, the report said. 

And yet, despite tobacco industry marketing, WHO stressed that there is no evidence filters provide any proven health benefits over smoking non-filtered cigarettes. 

The UN agency urged policymakers worldwide to treat cigarette filters as single-use plastics, and to consider banning them. 

The WHO also called for the implementation of stronger tobacco taxes – including an environmental tax – and for countries to extend support services to help people quit tobacco.