Tobacco and the environment

hard facts

Smoking not only damages your health, it has a massive impact on the environment by:

a) polluting the air

b) destroying forests

c) starting bushfires

d) killing marine creatures

e) all of the above

The answer is 'e'. Each time you smoke a cigarette, chemicals are released into the atmosphere, polluting the air.

But pollution is not the only way cigarettes damage the environment.

Approximately 5 million hectares (600 million trees) of forest are destroyed each year to provide trees to dry tobacco. This is the same size of 3.6 million Aussie Rules Football fields.
Over 32 billion cigarettes are smoked in Australia each year. If the butts from these cigarettes were placed end to end, they would circle the planet 16 times.
Litter caused by cigarette butts is a significant problem in Australia. Nearly 7 billion cigarette butts are not disposed of properly in Australia each year.
Nearly 7% of bushfires, which are responsible for 14 deaths each year, are caused by carelessly discarded burning cigarette butts.
When it rains, cigarette butts lying in our streets and gutters are washed in to our harbours, beaches and rivers. The chemicals in these butts and the butts themselves impact on our water quality and can be deadly to our marine life (Clean up Australia).
Cigarette butts can take up to 12 months to break down in fresh water and up to five years to break down in sea water (Clean up Australia).
Cigarette butts have been found in the stomachs of young birds, sea turtles and other marine creatures (Clean up Australia).

For more information on how tobacco affects the environment check out: