DESTROYED BY TOBACCO
THE TRUE STORY OF DEFORESTATION AND BIG TOBACCO
Tobacco companies have been using images of nature in their ads for decades, as if smoking were actually a part of being in the great outdoors. But in reality, the same companies are destroying forests all over the world just to make more cigarettes and more money. We know that we have to use wood for a lot of things. But do we really have to destroy forests just to make cigarettes?
THE REALITY
This page is about the wood needed to make tobacco. We’re not even talking about the packaging tobacco products come in.
Check out all of the information below to get the hard facts about this completely unnecessary cause of global deforestation.
CURING TOBACCO
In order for cigarettes to be made, the tobacco has to be dried out, a process called "curing." To do so, some tobacco companies burn wood for as long as seven days to get the tobacco leaves dry. That’s an entire week of burning wood. When you break it down, it can take up to 5.7lbs of wood* just to make enough tobacco for one pack of cigarettes. Next time you’re in a convenience store, take a look at all the packs of cigarettes behind the counter and think about how many trees may have been fried just to make each pack.
WASHINGTON, DC IS BURNING x 11!
So how does this really contribute to global deforestation? Well, the entire process destroys 494,000 acres of forest every year. That’s like burning down a forest that’s 11 times the size of Washington, DC. Again, that happens every year just to produce more cigarettes.
REFERENCES
*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.
...TO AN ENVIRONMENTAL CRISP
We get it. There are other reasons trees are being cut down. But 35 countries are now facing environmental crises just because tobacco companies continue to slash 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?
LEARN MORE
Global Assessment of Deforestation
Related to Tobacco Farming
Download a summary of an academic study
about global deforestation by tobacco
Tobacco growing in Uganda
This research study describes how much wood is
used to cure tobacco.