Cigarette Smoking: An Assessment of Tobacco’s Global Environmental Footprint Across Its Entire Supply Chain

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Abstract
While the health effects of cigarette smoking are well recognised and documented, the environmental impacts of tobacco are less appreciated and often overlooked. Here we evaluate tobacco’s global footprint across its entire supply chain, looking at resources needs, wastes and emissions of the full cradle-to-grave life cycle of cigarettes. The cultivation of 32.4 Mt of green tobacco used for the production of 6.48 Mt of dry tobacco in the six trillion cigarettes manufactured worldwide in 2014, were shown to contribute almost 84 Mt CO2 eq emissions to climate change – approximately 0.2% of the global total, 490,000 tonnes 1,4 dichlorobenzene eq to ecosystem ecotoxicity levels, over 22 billion m3 and 21 Mt oil eq to water and fossil fuel depletion respectively. A typical cigarette was shown to have a water footprint of 3.7 litres, a climate change contribution of 14 g CO2 eq, and a fossil fuel depletion contribution of 3.5 g oil eq. Tobacco competes with essential commodities for resources and places significant pressures on the health of our planet and its most vulnerable inhabitants. Increased awareness as well as better monitoring and assessment of the environmental issues associated with tobacco should support the current efforts to reduce global tobacco use as an important element of sustainable development.

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