Note: World Lung Foundation united with The Union North America. From January 2016, the combined organization is known as “Vital Strategies.”
(April 22, 2015, New York, USA) – Today, to coincide with World Earth Day, World Lung Foundation (WLF) joined calls for action and enforceable regulation to promote sustainability and protect the environment, in order to help improve global health. In addition, WLF called on environment and sustainability professionals to join health experts around the globe in advocating for stronger tobacco control, to help reduce tobacco’s deadly toll on our planet and its people.
Sandra Mullin, Senior Vice President, Policy and Communications, said: “Today, many people around the world have a basic awareness of the harms of tobacco to health, but tobacco’s harm to the environment and to sustainability is a lesser known story. That’s why we devoted chapters to these topics in the new edition of The Tobacco Atlas, shedding light on some of Big Tobacco’s most dirty secrets.
“For example, in 2012 the same low and middle income countries that received US$133 billion in development aid spent $US350 billion on tobacco. This is a real barrier to economic growth. Similarly, tobacco use is more prevalent and takes its greatest toll among the poorest and most vulnerable in our society because they are least likely to be aware of the real harms of this deadly product – so tobacco further entrenches social, economic and health inequalities. Meanwhile, tobacco leaches more nutrients from the earth than other arable crops, leading to increased deforestation, and tobacco farming, manufacture and use causes earth, sea and air pollution. Each year 1.69 billion tonnes of toxic rubbish is generated from cigarette butts alone.
“The tobacco control and environmental and sustainability communities have a lot in common. We can all see that the burden of harm is increasingly being borne by the most vulnerable, perpetuating cycles of poverty and degraded environments where there should be progress. We are all fighting against the vested interests of big business – often transnational corporations – whose only interest is increasing profits. We all urge governments to take action to avoid harm, while better-funded industry lobbyists spread misinformation, discredit science and scaremonger about economic impacts of regulation in order to delay and derail progress. Indeed, climate change sceptics have borrowed strategies from Big Tobacco’s playbook of denial and misinformation and lobbyists who once fought tobacco control are now leading the charge against climate change regulation.
“We firmly believe that closer co-operation between health, environment and sustainability advocates could deliver further impetus in all three areas. Our voices can be stronger and more powerful if we work together. If we use our collective voices in the fight against tobacco – just as we are adding our voice to calls for better environmental regulation – we could accelerate progress towards a world free from tobacco’s many harms.”
Key facts on tobacco’s harm to sustainability and the environment
The latest edition of The Tobacco Atlas notes that:
• 1.69 billion pounds of toxic rubbish is generated from 4.5 trillion cigarette butts deposited somewhere into the environment each year
• Litter from cigarettes fouls the environment. Non-biodegradable cigarette filters are the single most collected item in beach clean-ups around the world and the material that leaches out of these filters is toxic to aquatic life.
• Tobacco farming is increasingly concentrated in low and middle income countries (LMICs) that don’t have strong health and environmental protection policies in place, leading to an increase in ill-health, deforestation and environmental degradation in these countries.
• Tobacco is a demanding crop. Cultivation involves heavy use of pesticides, growth regulators and chemical fertilizers and tobacco depletes the soil of nutrients, including nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus more than other food and cash crops.
• New areas of woodlands are cleared every year for tobacco crops (as opposed to re-using plots) and for wood needed for curing tobacco leaves, leading to deforestation. This deforestation can contribute to climate change by removing trees that eliminate CO2 from the atmosphere.
• In Kenya, the tobacco industry’s reforestation initiatives involved fast-growing exotic species rather than more ecologically suited indigenous trees, leading to adverse ecological outcomes.
• The tobacco industry has been aggressively targeting consumers in low and middle income countries. Its efforts have, quite literally, paid off while development aid goes up in smoke. In 2012, low and middle income countries received a total of US$133 billion in development aid, while spending more than double that amount, $US350 billion, on tobacco products.
• Smoking-related illness takes workers out of the work force, adding to the indirect costs of tobacco and creating further downward pressure on the economy, especially in LMICs.
• The tobacco industry proclaims that it is good for growing economies, but the short-term benefits of a crop that generates cash for some farmers are offset by the long-term consequences of increased food insecurity, frequent sustained debt, environmental damage, and illness and poverty among farm workers.
• 12 of the top 25 tobacco-leaf producing countries also have more than 10% undernourishment. Zambia has 43% undernourishment, Mozambique has 37% undernourishment and Tanzania has 33% undernourishment.
• In LMICs, many small tobacco farmers are often forced to sell their crop at a low, fixed price – after having to over-pay tobacco companies for fertilizer, seeds, technical advice, and other items, trapping them in a type of indentured servitude.
• The tobacco industry saves approximately $1.2 billion by using unpaid child labor. Children are taken out of school to work in the fields or their parents are too poor to pay school fees. A USA study found that nearly three-quarters of children laboring in tobacco fields experienced symptoms of green tobacco sickness. Ill health and lack of education drives individuals further into poverty.
• Projects in China and Kenya show that tobacco farmers can enjoy a healthier, more profitable and more sustainable existence by switching to alternative food crops.