Tobacco Product's Harm on the Environment

How Tobacco Products Harm the Environment From Their Manufacture to Consumption

Tobacco products harm the environment in ways that go beyond air pollution and cigarette litter. The process of growing tobacco, manufacturing tobacco products and delivering them to retailers causes severe and irreversible damage to the environment. Tobacco use also remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the U.S.

"From start to finish, the tobacco life cycle is an overwhelmingly polluting and damaging process," states a 2017 World Health Organization report, “Tobacco and its environmental impact: an overview." "It is not just about the lives of smokers and those around them, or even those involved in tobacco production. What is now at stake is the fate of an entire planet."

Growing and curing
Tobacco growing and curing (the drying of the tobacco leaf) are both direct causes of deforestation, because forests are cleared for tobacco plantations and wood is burned to cure tobacco. Deforestation is a cause of climate change, soil erosion, reduced soil fertility and disrupted water cycles.

Manufacture and production
The processes involved in manufacturing cigarettes alone can cause the most environmental damage during tobacco’s life cycle because of the large amounts of energy, water and other resources used. 

Consumption
The smoke generated from burning tobacco, called secondhand smoke or environmental tobacco smoke, contains more than 7,000 toxic chemicals that pollute both indoor and outdoor environments and can be toxic even after the tobacco product is put out. Thirdhand smoke, which can affect air quality and become more toxic over time, is the residue from secondhand smoke that gathers in dust and on objects and surfaces in indoor environments. These objects can end up in landfills and waste, becoming a further pollution risk to the environment. 

Post-consumption
The end of tobacco’s life cycle is tobacco product waste, which includes cigarette butts, the most littered item on earth. With 75 percent of smokers reporting that they dispose cigarettes on the ground or out of a car, an estimated 1.69 billion pounds of cigarette butts wind up as toxic trash each year.

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