but tobacco-free
Making cigarettes contributes to worldwide deforestation. Up to 5.7 lbs of wood is used to make one pack of cigarettes. Sounds crazy right? But it’s true. And it’s not because of the paper on the cigarette or box. Here is why so much wood is often used to make cigarettes.
Because of this process, tons of trees are burned down to make tobacco…
In many of the countries where lots of tobacco is made, they burn wood to dry out the leaves. It takes up to 7 days for a tobacco leaf to fully dry out. That means lots of wood. Once the process is complete, up to 5.7lbs of wood have been burnt for just one pack of cigarettes. This does NOT include the paper on the cigarette or the packaging. Every year, 494,000 acres of forest are cut down for wood to burn to make cigarettes. That’s like cutting down an area bigger than Green Mountain National Forest, every year.
Don’t we use wood for tons of other stuff?
We get it. There are other reasons trees are being cut down. But many of those products use a sustainable process where trees are replanted. A lot of tobacco production doesn’t. In fact, 35 countries are now facing environmental crises just because tobacco companies continue to cut down and burn their trees to make cigarettes. In South Africa, 12% of all trees cut down are used to make tobacco products. It’s even worse in Korea, where 45% of deforestation is attributed to tobacco production. We have to use trees to make a lot of things, but are cigarettes worth it?
Muwanga-bayego h. Tobacco growing in Uganda: the environment and women pay the price. Tobacco control. 1994: 3: 255-6.
Calculated using findings from tobacco growing in Uganda study (muwanga-bayego, 1994) that found that farmers reported using 130kg of wood to cure 1kg of tobacco, while government and tobacco industry officials estimate 100kg of wood to cure 1kg of tobacco. Using the government and tobacco industry’s own estimate, we calculated the per pack wood requirement assuming 26g of tobacco per pack of cigarettes. Converting to pounds, this amounted to 5.7lbs of wood per pack of cigarettes.
