News and Events
Big Tobacco’s Effect on Our Environment
September 13, 2022
With environmental impact being a hot topic of discussion now a days, it has been a good aid to help push the fight against big tobacco companies. People of the world our expressing concern for the polar caps melting, record high temperatures, and dry spells effecting the planet and how does big tobacco play into this?
Besides the 8 million human lives lost to tobacco annually, there is also an environmental threat. Annually tobacco companies flatten 200,000 hectares of forests (equivalent to 600 million trees) to grow and cure tobacco yearly. On average one tree cut down will make the room to produce 15 boxes of cigarettes. Production of cigarettes also produces almost 84 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually and causes 22 billion tons of water depletion, double the annual water supply of the United Kingdom. All this damage is done just to produce cigarettes, more waste is caused with the disposal of these products as well.
After the production of an estimated 6 trillion cigarettes annually, cigarette butts become the most discarded waste item worldwide. These butts make a whopping 766 kilograms of toxic trash added to our environment. Microplastics are also found in these discarded butts and now have been discovered to be leeching into bodies of water. These plastics can cause long-term effects in marine life, ecosystems, and even possibly our health in the future if a change is not made.
Tobacco companies are not only threatening the health of the human population for generations but also starting to affect the earth. With the sunshine state surrounded by beautiful waterways and clean drinking water we need to start paying attention to all the factors going into protecting our ecosystems.
