During the quarantine my back patio with a great view of the woods kept the insanity of not being able to leave my house at bay. Unfortunately, when I'm sitting outside listening to birds chirp and staring at some leaves, I often catch a whiff of bitter smoke. I look around and sure enough it's one of my neighbors smoking. Since I have truly brilliant luck, nearly every single one of my neighbors in apartments next to mine smoke. This fact had been apparent since the time I found a cigarette butt the guy upstairs had dropped on our poor cactus. I was aware of the horrifying effects of smoking on the human body (Tobacco use, especially cigarette smoking, is the most preventable cause of death in the United States) but as I stared at the cigarette butt in my cactus I wondered how bad smoking is for the environment. Spoiler: it's bad, really bad.
Cigarette butts are the world’s most littered plastic item. Let that horrifying fact sink in...like the nicotine, heavy metals, and many other chemicals sink into the surrounding environment after these butts are casually discarded. For starters, smoking causes air pollution by releasing toxic air pollutants into the atmosphere. The cigarette butts also litter the environment and the toxic chemicals in the remains seep into soils and waterways therefore causing soil and water pollution respectively. A recent study found that cigarette butts inhibit plant growth. They also routinely get into waterways, and eventually oceans. Animals and plants that come into contact or absorb the toxic substances from the cigarette residues are affected. What makes these consequences worse is the sheer number of smokers and therefore cigarette butts discarded. Smokers around the world buy roughly 6.5 trillion cigarettes each year. That’s 18 billion every day. While most of a cigarette’s innards and paper wrapping disintegrate when smoked, not everything gets burned. Trillions of cigarette filters—also known as butts or ends—are left over, only an estimated third of which make it into the trash. E-cigarettes are just as bad if not worse, containing more plastic and the same toxic chemicals.
While the effects of smoking and the consequent littering of cigarettes are bad enough on their own, the utter dumpster fire that is the tobacco industry adds to the horrible environmental effect.
Frequently, tobacco farmers clear the forest by burning it; often, the land is abandoned, contributing in many cases to desertification. Not only does this slash-and-burn agriculture generate vast amounts of pollutants, much of this land is cleared of carbon dioxide-absorbing forest cover. As a result, tobacco cultivation is exacerbating greenhouse gas levels.Tobacco is one of the most chemically-intensive crops. Most farmers heavily use inorganic chemical fertilizers to promote growth and herbicides to mitigate competing weeds. Because tobacco is typically grown as a monocrop, it is also particularly vulnerable to pests and most farmers heavily use pesticides. Furthermore, in most tobacco producing countries (primarily developing nations such as India, Brazil and China), there is evidence that farmers continue to use chemicals that are restricted or banned in most higher-HDI regions, such as the European Union. The tobacco product manufacturing process generates vast amounts of waste. The last rigorous estimate, from 1995, suggested that the industry produces more than 2.5 million tonnes of manufacturing waste, much of which contains nicotine and other dangerous chemicals. As global tobacco production is currently greater than in 1995, this negative impact can only be higher still today.
This graphic summarises the terrible effect of cigarettes and the larger tobacco industry on the environment pretty well.
To alleviate the horrifying environmental impact of tobacco products the following solutions have been proposed. First, there are steps you can take on an individual level: don't smoke and spread awareness on the environmental degradation that cigarettes can cause. Assist in cleanup efforts to help remove cigarette butts and prevent them from leaching chemicals into the ground. However these practices can only do so much, on a legislative level one solution would be to ban cigarette filters i.e the cigarette butts or introduce biodegradable cigarette filters. Unfortunately, consumers don't want to buy cigarettes without filters causing companies to hesitate on alternatives to the harmful plastic filters. A way to tackle e-cig waste would be a deposit system i.e you exchange your old cartridges for new ones which juul is considering.
What are some more ways we could reduce the impact of smoking and cigarettes? Do you know someone/someone who smokes? Do you think public awareness of the environmental effects of tobacco will reduce smoking? Are companies responsible for introducing environmentally sustainable disposal programs?
7 comments:
That’s crazy to me. Cigarettes, despite their downfall in sales during recent years, are still the world’s most littered plastic item. I didn’t know they had heavy metals in them which obviously cannot be good for the environment. I knew that smoking was bad for your lungs, so to know the true environmental impacts of smoking makes it even more disgusting in my opinion. I also somehow forgot that tobacco actually comes from a plant, so the slash and burn agriculture technique is even worse for the environment. Overall, I’m really disappointed that this knowledge isn’t advertised enough. I think people would be surprised once they saw the nitty gritty data.
I knew smoking has a big impact on a person’s life, but I never understood that such a small cigarette can hurt the environment too. Unfortunately, I do know someone who smokes and it is really upsetting to see the changes that cigarettes can have upon a person. I think public awareness can reduce smoking impacts but not enough. Once people start it is extremely difficult to stop, so people may not listen to the effects of tobacco. I think companies should be responsible for introducing environmentally sustainable disposal programs. They are mass producing this item, therefore they should be in charge of implementing ways for it to not hurt the environment.
Though we are often lectured on the negative health effects of smoking cigarettes, the environmental impact of cigarettes has never been mentioned. It’s also easy to forget that tobacco is a plant and is highly chemically-intensive. Somehow, this factor makes the issue seems much worse, because the negative impact of a cigarette can be traced back to the cultivation of the tobacco. I think that the companies should be responsible for developing sustainable cigarette disposal programs, because their mass-produced product is causing damage to the environment.
The best way to reduce the impact of smoking is simply to reduce the number of smokers. Nicotine products are already highly regulated and require notices that nicotine is a harmful and addictive chemical. I believe that it would be a good idea to impose a larger tax on the industry. It is proven that cigarettes have a horrible effect on your body and it is not a matter of if you will experience negative impacts but when. Luckily, no one in my family currently smokes, but my maternal grandmother died when I was a few months old due to lung cancer caused by smoking, so I am never going to start. I believe that companies should be responsible for the effects that their products have on other people as well as the environment and should be held accountable to make them more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Smoking is terrible for the health of human beings as well as the health of the planet. It’s crazy how many people smoke and the number just seems to be increasing. It is disgusting to see people throw away their lives while also harming the planet just to get their nicotine dose. One step to keep the planet healthy for future generations would be to, obviously, not smoke. Another way would be to raise awareness through social media. People are on their phones 24/7, and social media is a great way to send a message across. I, personally, would never dare to smoke and I associate myself with good people who don’t smoke as well. However, if I ever someone smoking, I take initiative and tell him or her to stop. Companies should take responsibility for the environmental effects that cigarettes and e-cigs have on the planet, in my opinion.
I did know someone who smoked, and it had just become a daily habit for him. With much convincing, he was able to step out from that habit. I do believe that smoking is terrible for any human, and if you do a couple of times it’ll just become a habit. There are many our society has tried to spread the word about smoking: in movies, public places, and in cigarette packs themselves, but there are many people who still partake in that activity. Since smoking have been so integrated into the lives of so many citizens, I believe that there is one way to save those humans and our environment, which would be to drastically raise the prices of cigarettes. Even this solution would not work because it would drive cigarettes companies out of business. Either government action has to be taken, which should restrict smoking, our the price should go up.
Every time I visit shopping centers, I can see the collection of cigarette butts on the ground. After a certain point, the butts stick to the ground and cannot be pulled up. This is terrible for the health of our environment. Smoking is also bad for the health of human beings. Really, there are no positive effects of cigarettes and smoking. At this point, smoking is a big part of our society, so it is going to be difficult for us to stop the trend. The price of cigarette packs need to be driven up to reduce sales, and there need to be more restrictions on how many cigarettes can be purchased for each person. Additionally, there need to be restrictions for cigarette companies so they don't continue to attract teenage customers.
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