Cigarettes kill more than 7 million people every year,6 and while most are familiar with the harmful impacts of tobacco products on public health, the carbon footprint of cigarettes lacks the same level of awareness.
From massive amounts of CO2 emissions, millions of tonnes of solid waste, and significant air and water pollution, the tobacco industry and the production of cigarettes cause large-scale destruction to the environment each year.
So what is a carbon footprint? A carbon footprint calculation is the sum of all greenhouse gasses generated directly or indirectly by an individual, company, or product.
Tobacco products produce a significant carbon footprint throughout the entire supply chain process. Growing and farming tobacco, shipping products, smoking cigarettes, cleaning up waste, each stage has a devastating environmental impact that goes mostly unreported.
Given the sheer magnitude of the problem and lack of publicly reported data, figuring out how to accurately calculate carbon footprint manually would be a tough task.
However, a research analysis sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) has helped to quantify the CO2 emissions,2 air and water emissions, and solid waste produced by the tobacco industry to help us get a better sense of the true carbon footprint of cigarettes.
Below, we’ll review the cigarette life cycle and outline the environmental damage associated with each stage.
What’s in a Cigarette?
Before diving into the carbon footprint of cigarettes, it’s important to know what’s in a cigarette.
While they might seem like fairly simple products, there are about 600 ingredients in cigarette tobacco and they produce over 7,000 chemicals when burned.7
Some of the more harmful cigarette ingredients are nicotine, acetone, acetic acid, formaldehyde, arsenic, hexamine, tar, butane, benzene, and dozens of others.1
In addition to tobacco which is loaded with harmful substances, cigarettes also consist of paper wrapping and a filter, and they’re packaged in plastic, aluminum foil, and paper cartons and shipped in cardboard boxes.
How Cigarettes Are Made
Ever wonder how cigarettes are made? Cigarettes and other tobacco products have a lengthy product life cycle.
Before cigarette products are consumed, tobacco must be cultivated and cured and cigarettes must be processed, packaged, and shipped.
Each stage of the cigarette life cycle is defined below:
- Tobacco Cultivation: Growing and harvesting the tobacco plants used to create cigarettes.
- Tobacco Curing: Before it can be rolled into cigarettes, tobacco must be air-cured in a well-ventilated barn or indoor environment for one to two months.
- Processing: Cutting, blending, flavoring, and drying the tobacco and packing it into cigarettes.
- Packaging: From sourcing non-tobacco components of the cigarette (filters, paper) to producing cartons, the carbon footprint of packaging is significant.
- Usage and Disposal: Purchasing cigarettes, smoking cigarettes, and disposing of cigarette butts.
Assessing the Carbon Footprint of Cigarettes Throughout the Product Life Cycle
The production and consumption of a single pack of cigarettes have far-reaching environmental impacts across the globe, and below we’ll attempt to assess the carbon footprint of cigarettes throughout the product life cycle.
While the carbon footprint of cigarettes is difficult to define using a carbon emissions calculator, we’ll review each stage of the process and share statistics that can help quantify the effects.
1. Growing Tobacco
Mass-producing tobacco in large quantities is quite devastating to the environment. According to an analysis by Maria Zafeiridou, Nicholas Hopkinson, and Nikolaos Voulvoulis in a 2018 study, tobacco cultivation is simply not sustainable.
Tobacco is grown in 125 different countries with Brazil, India, and China being the largest. About 5.3 million hectares of land are used to grow tobacco, which has resulted in 1.5 billion hectares of deforestation since the1970s.2
This has led to a substantial (potentially up to 20%) annual increase in greenhouse gas emissions.3
(Image: Couleur10)
In addition to the loss of tree and plant life, several components of the cultivation process produce adverse effects on the environment:
- Harvesting: Manufacturing vehicles and consuming fuel when harvesting tobacco can have significant environmental impacts when done on a large scale.
- Land & Water Use: Growing tobacco requires a huge irrigation system and thousands of acres of land that could have otherwise been used for growing food.
- Pesticides: Not only do pesticides have harmful effects on the environment, but shipping large quantities of these products can produce a significant amount of carbon emissions.
- Seedlings: Energy consumption associated with sourcing and planting tobacco seedlings leads to greenhouse gas emissions and environmental waste.
- Land Clearing: Fuel and resources required to clear large amounts of land at scale contribute to the carbon footprint.
According to data, cultivating tobacco is a huge-scale operation that generates an astounding 20.9 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses into the air, 21.8 billion tonnes of water waste and water emissions (mostly losses from irrigation), and 19.4 million tonnes of solid waste every year.2
2. Tobacco Curing
Did you know that once tobacco is grown, it must be cured before it can be used for cigarettes? Air-curing tobacco creates more carbon emissions than any other stage of the cigarette life cycle.
Research suggests that up to 50 million trees are cut down every year or 1 tree for every 300 cigarettes to fuel a variety of curing methods.3 Flue curing is when tobacco is cured under artificial heat produced from externally fed fire boxes and is the most common way of curing cigarette tobacco.
Air curing is another common method (and was the primary method for hundreds of years). Leaves are hung and exposed to hot air for four to eight weeks, but there are other methods for curing too.
Regardless, tobacco curing harms the environment in three ways:
- Transportation: The process of moving harvested tobacco to curing centers or barns requires energy and produces carbon emissions.
- Wood/Coal: Sourcing wood and coal and burning it to produce the heat necessary to cure tobacco produces a lot of greenhouse gasses.
- Curing barns: The equipment and energy needed to build curing barns has a major environmental impact.
Curing tobacco generates an estimated 44.6 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses into the air each year. It also generates 25.9 million tonnes of water waste and water emissions annually.2
3. Manufacturing a Cigarette Pack
The next step in the process is manufacturing, which is a large-scale operation that requires a tremendous amount of natural and human resources.
Below are several specific manufacturing processes that contribute to the carbon footprint of cigarettes:
- Transportation: Shipping cured tobacco to a manufacturing facility produces carbon emissions.
- Packaging: Energy consumed when creating and shipping plastic wrapping, packaging, aluminum foil inserts, cartons, and all the other materials needed to create a pack of cigarettes.
- Processing Tobacco: Applying thousands of chemicals, additives, and flavorings to the tobacco is an energy-intensive operation
- Filters: Energy and machines required to mass-produce cigarette filters
- Land and Water Use: Acres used for manufacturing facilities and water used to operate plants.
Manufacturing cigarettes generates an estimated 15.7 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses, 9 million tonnes of water waste and water emissions, and 1.2 million tonnes of waste each year.2
4. Cigarette Distribution
The transport and distribution of cigarettes to retailers and consumers all over the world produces a massive amount of greenhouse gasses. Transporting cigarettes to a point of sale is usually done with diesel-driven trucks, and diesel pollution is a primary cause of disease-related air pollution.
- Advertising/Marketing Materials: Paper, energy, and machines consumed during the creation of print-based advertisements.
- Transportation: Vehicles and fuel are needed to transport cigarettes to retailers all over the world.
- Packaging: The creation of boxes used to package cigarettes in bulk.
Distributing cigarettes to retailers all over the world generates 0.4 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses into the air each year.2
5. Use and Disposal of Cigarette Butts
Cigarette filters are the most littered item in the world.8 Over 9.7 billion cigarettes are thrown on the ground in the United States alone each year and an estimated 766,571 metric tons of cigarette butts have been littered across the world over the past two decades.4
Cleaning up cigarette butt waste costs taxpayers an estimated $7 million per year. While some assume cigarette butts are biodegradable, some studies have shown that they only lose about 38% of their mass over a two-year period.5
Plus, while cigarette butts decompose, they unleash a wide range of harmful chemicals into the environment.
Disposing of cigarette packaging is harmful too. Single-use plastic packaging has a short lifespan but can produce greenhouse gasses for thousands of years.
Every ton of plastic waste in landfills releases about 3 tons of CO2 emissions. The process of distributing cigarettes to retailers generates an estimated 0.9 million tonnes of greenhouse gas into the air and 4.1 million tonnes of solid waste each year.2
Calculating the Carbon Footprint of Cigarettes
While it’s clear cigarettes are harmful to the environment in a number of ways, calculating the carbon footprint of cigarettes is no easy task.
Tobacco products have a long and complicated supply chain and the industry lacks any form of standardized or mandatory reporting on environmental impacts. As a result, tobacco companies are often left to set their own environmental goals, and many do not track or disclose data pertaining to CO2 emissions.
However, according to the analysis by Zafeiridoi, Hopkinson, and Voulvoulis, below are research-backed quantifiable impacts tobacco has on our environment:2
- 8 million human lives lost per year
- 84 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year
- 25 million tonnes of waste per year
- 200,000 hectares of land per year
- 22 billion tonnes of water per year
To break it down even further, one person smoking a single pack of cigarettes every day for 50 years would result in an estimated 5.1t CO2 emissions,9 62 years worth of a water supply for 3 people, and total fossil fuel depletion of 1.3-tonne oil equivalent (avg electricity use of an average household in India for 15 years).
About 132 trees would need to be planted and grown for 10 years just to offset the CO2 emissions alone.
The environmental cost imposed by the creation of tobacco products is vast, and the best way to reduce these impacts is by developing new strategies aimed at persuading consumers not to smoke. While cigarette use in the United States has declined, it’s increasing in other areas of the world.
Reducing the demand for tobacco products will ultimately lead to a decline in production and eventually soften the environmental impacts and reduce the carbon footprint of cigarettes.
Frequently Asked Questions About Carbon Footprint of Cigarettes
What Are Cigarettes Made Of?
Cigarettes consist of tobacco, hundreds of chemical additives, filters, and paper wrapping.
How Are Cigarettes Made?
Tobacco is cultivated, cured, and processed, and then it’s shipped to a manufacturing facility where chemical additives, paper, filters, and packaging are added to create the final product.
Are Cigarette Butts Biodegradable?
Studies have shown that cigarette butts see a slow 38% reduction in mass over a 2-year period.5 While they’re decomposing, cigarettes introduce a significant amount of harmful chemicals and toxic substances into the water and soil.
What Materials Are Used for Cigarette Packaging?
Cigarette packaging consists of several different materials including paper/aluminum composite, paper tape, board, and plastic film (the outer wrapper).
How Do Cigarette Filters Produce Greenhouse Gases?
The processes of sourcing the filter materials (cellulose acetate, paper, and rayon), producing the filters in bulk, and picking up disposed cigarette butts require a significant amount of energy and produce massive amounts of greenhouse gasses all over the world.
How Can Growing Tobacco Hurt the Environment?
Growing tobacco at a large scale requires a massive amount of water (21.8 billion tonnes per year to be exact), as well as vehicles, machines, and fuel. It also requires a large amount of land that could otherwise be used for food or vegetation and results in the removal of over 600 million trees each year.
Why Is Tobacco Bad for You?
Tobacco products have both health-related and environmental consequences. Not only do they cause cancer and other diseases, but manufacturing them produces a massive amount of waste and emissions into the air, water, and soil.
How Much Solid Waste Is Produced By Cigarette Disposal?
The production and disposal of cigarettes produce an incredible 4.1 million tonnes of solid waste each year.
Why Is Smoking Bad for the Environment?
Producing and consuming cigarettes results in significant carbon emissions, water and soil pollution, and solid waste all over the world, which significantly contributes to climate change.
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References
1U.S. Food & Drug Association. (2020, June 3). Chemicals in Cigarettes: From Plant to Product to Puff. U.S. Food & Drug Association. Retrieved December 30, 2023, from <https://www.fda.gov/tobacco-products/products-ingredients-components/chemicals-cigarettes-plant-product-puff>
2Zafeiridou, M., Hopkinson, N., Voulvoulis, N. (2018). Cigarette Smoking: An Assessment of Tobacco’s Global Environmental Footprint Across Its Entire Supply Chain. ACS Publications. Retrieved December 30, 2023, from <https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b01533>
3World Health Organization. (2017). Tobacco and its environmental impact: an overview. World Health Organization. Retrieved December 30, 2023, from <https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/255574/9789241512497-eng.pdf;jsessionid=91D97BC6296CD685B5673FBE787D66D9?sequence=1>
4Webler T., Jakubowski, K. (2022, July 1). Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors About Cigarette-Butt Littering among College-Aged Adults in the United States. National Library of Medicine. Retrieved December 30, 2023, from <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9265565/>
5Evans-Reeves, K., Lauber, K., Hiscock, R. (2022, August 31). The ‘filter fraud’ persists: the tobacco industry is still using filters to suggest lower health risks while destroying the environment. National Library of Medicine. Retrieved December 30, 2023, from <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9340047/>
6Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022, July 29). Diseases and Death. CDC. Retrieved January 31, 2024, from <https://archive.cdc.gov/>
7American Lung Association. (2023, May 31). What’s In a Cigarette? American Lung Association. Retrieved January 31, 2024, from <https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/smoking-facts/whats-in-a-cigarette>
8University of Bath. (2022, May 30). Tobacco and the Environment. Tobacco Tactics. Retrieved January 31, 2024, from <https://tobaccotactics.org/article/tobacco-and-the-environment/>
9Frankel, M., Friedrich, J., & Anjum, R. (2015, Seotember 24). 8 Interactive Graphics Answer Top Climate Change Questions. World Resources Institute. Retrieved January 31, 2024, from <https://www.wri.org/insights/8-interactive-graphics-answer-top-climate-change-questions>
10Tobacco Nicotiana tabacum Leaves Photo by Couleur. (2019, September 6) / Pixabay Content License. Resized and Changed Format. Pixabay. Retrieved January 31, 2024, from <https://pixabay.com/photos/tobacco-nicotiana-tabacum-leaves-4457185/>