3.7 liters of water for a single cigarette: shedding light on a major, little-known waste

As confirmed by a study published on October 2, 2018 by Imperial College London^[1], the tobacco industry is a sector of activity which mobilizes considerable natural resources.

Thus, in addition to the millions of hectares of arable land, the resulting deforestation and the large quantities of wood required for drying tobacco, the tobacco industry also requires a huge amount of water. The study estimates that Cigarette manufacturers consume 22.2 billion cubic meters each year, the equivalent of 7.5 million Olympic swimming pools.

It is also interesting to compare this figure to the scale of a smoker. A person who has smoked a pack of cigarettes for fifty years will have used more than 1.350 million liters of water for smoking: this is the average quantity of water used by a French person for 25 years for their domestic consumption.^[2] (hygiene, food, etc.).

This overconsumption of water is not the prerogative of the heaviest smokers. Even among more moderate consumers, smoking has an undeniable ecological impact. Buying a pack of cigarettes used 74 litres of water, or 20 litres more than for the operation of a conventional washing machine. According to the study cited above, nearly four liters of water are required on average for the manufacture, processing and sale of a cigarette.

This overexploitation of water resources linked to tobacco production constitutes a serious obstacle to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12. and in particular in its target 6.3 according to which “By 2030, improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping of waste and minimizing releases of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse of water globally”

And its target 12.2 which states that “By 2030, achieve sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources” and target 12.6 12.6 which states that “businesses, in particular large and transnational enterprises, should be encouraged to adopt sustainable practices and to include sustainability information in their reporting”[3].

However, according to another study, made public on August 6, 2019 by the World Resource Institute^[4], a quarter of the world's population is in a situation of water shortage, and seventeen countries are directly threatened by "day zero", from which water stops flowing from the taps.

The tobacco industry, due to the quantities of water it requires, has direct responsibility for the depletion of groundwater, and participates extensively in “ the biggest crisis that no one talks about " and whose consequences will take the form of " food insecurity, conflict, migration, and financial instability ", according to Andrew Steer, CEO of WRI. In its Articles 17 and 18, the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control emphasizes the need to take into account environmental imperatives, and to propose economically viable alternatives to tobacco growing.

©Tobacco Free Generation