Tatsat Chronicle Magazine

Cleaning Up Littered Tobacco Products Costs India $766 Mn Every Year: WHO

A new WHO report points out that the carbon footprint of the tobacco production, processing and transport industry is equivalent to one-fifth of the CO2 produced each year by the airline industry
June 2, 2022
littered tobacco

According to a report by the World Health Organization (WHO), India spends about $766 million a year to clean up tobacco products.

The report, Tobacco: Poisoning Our Planet, points out that the carbon footprint of the tobacco production, processing and transport industry is equivalent to one-fifth of the CO2 produced each year by the airline industry, which further contributes to global warming.

Most tobacco is grown in low- and middle-income countries, where water and agricultural land are often needed for food production. Instead, the land is being used to grow deadly tobacco trees, while more forest land is cleared, the report said.

“The costs of cleaning up littered tobacco products fall on taxpayers, rather than the industry creating the problem. Each year, this costs China roughly $2.6 billion and India roughly $766 million. The cost for Brazil and Germany comes in at over $200 million,” said the report.

The WHO said that every year the tobacco industry consumes 8 million people worldwide, 600 million trees, 2,00,000 hectares of land, 22 billion tonnes of water and 84 million tonnes of CO2.

“Tobacco products are the most littered item on the planet, containing over 7,000 toxic chemicals, which leech into our environment when discarded. Roughly, 4.5 trillion cigarette filters pollute our oceans, rivers, city sidewalks, parks, soil and beaches every year,” said Dr Ruediger Krech, director of Health Promotion at WHO.

The report from the leading public health agency released new information on the extent to which tobacco harms both the environment and human health, and called for action to hold the industry more accountable for the devastation that it caused.

India is also the second biggest consumer and producer of tobacco. Various types of tobacco products are available in the country at very low prices.

According to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey India, 2016-17, approximately 267 million adults (15 years and older) in India (29% of all adults) use tobacco. The most common form of tobacco consumption is smokeless tobacco and products are khaini, gutkha, betel quid with tobacco and zarda. Smoking forms of tobacco are bidi, cigarette and hookah.