A new report shows that the six trillion cigarettes produced yearly impact the environment through climate change, water and land use, and toxicity.
The devastating impact of the tobacco industry on human health is well known but there is a substantial impact of the tobacco industry on the environment.
These impacts include climate change from energy and fuel consumption, water and soil depletion, and acidification. The global cultivation of tobacco requires substantial land use, water consumption, pesticides and labour – all finite resources that might be put to better use.
‘Processing’ – the curing of tobacco leaves to produce dry tobacco – is highly energy intensive, using coal or wood burning that contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation. Tobacco production also uses more than 22 billion tonnes of water.
The transport and manufacture of cigarettes, as well as their final use and disposal, also use more resources and leave further waste.
The world’s top cigarette consuming country – China – harvests over 3 Mt of tobacco leaves using over 1.5 million hectares of arable land and significant fresh water resources – while habitats suffer from water scarcity and nearly 134 million of its people are undernourished.
This calls for a range of actions to address these issues. These include strengthening the global evidence base so that gaps in the current environmental data can be filled, encouraging sustainable investment as well as making sure that the environmental cost of tobacco is included in the price, and encouraging the industry to take responsibility for the whole life cycle of its products.
Iran faces losing 70 percent of its farmlands if urgent action is not taken to overcome a litany of climate woes, the country’s environment chief Isa Kalantari told.
The Islamic Republic is grappling not only with air, water and soil pollution, as well as drought and desertification, but also with the effect of years of crippling US and international sanctions.
They currently use about 100 percent of their renewable water .According to global standards this figure should not be higher than 40 percent.
If the situation is not brought under control, then they would lose about 70 percent of our cultivated land in a maximum of 20 to 30 years.”
According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, Iran, a country of some 80 million people, predominantly relies on agriculture.
Kalantari said there had been many years of mismanagement of water resources, and mistaken decisions forced by political and economic concerns such as the US sanctions and climate change.
The pressure on the country’s resources has also been exacerbated by population growth, with Iranians encouraged to have large families in the years following its 1979 Islamic revolution.
This policy was taken without paying attention to utilising and improving the use of resources .
He also highlighted the effects of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), when the country was isolated and could not concern itself with sustainable development as it had a burgeoning population to feed.
The strain has shown recently with Iranians taking to the streets in December and January this year, protesting over economic conditions.
Even with state-of-the-art technology, Iran could only be completely self-sufficient to supply food for 50 to 55 million people. –
Flooding that occurred on two southern islands was predicted by an environment impact assessment for a causeway to connect the Hoadehdhoo and Madaveli islands in Gaaf Dhaal atoll.
Hoadehdhoo islanders dug out a section from the 440-meter causeway after swell surges flooded the island over the previous week.
The destruction of the causeway to unblock water flow between the islands was condemned by ruling party lawmakers. It was a politically-motivated and unlawful damage but the opposition-majority council said islanders were forced to act when waves rose over the causeway and seeped ashore. The authorities failed to respond to calls.
The environmental impact assessment report – which is not available online but a copy of which has been seen by Maldives Independent – had warned that the causeway would close the aperture between the islands of Madaveli, Haadhoo and Hoadehdhoo, which are located in the same lagoon.
“In the event of storm surge (udha), water will pile up at the western side bay area causing rise of water level consequently causing flooding,” the EIA report stated.
Even at present, periodic flooding is experienced during [the southwestern] monsoon due to storm surge. Therefore protection against storm surge is thought to be less and negative impacts high due to current design of the causeway.
The design lacked coastal protection measures, the report noted.
Last week’s flooding salinated farm fields and damaged the mangroves, Hoadehdhoo island council president Mohamed Ayash told the Maldives Independent.
Sources from the Environment Protection Agency confirmed to the Maldives Independent that the water would not flow when the culverts are submerged. This was noted by the EPA when the project was launched.
But an MTCC official told local media that the company was not to blame for the “design flaw” as it “did the work based on the designs housing ministry gave us.”
The EIA report had also identified other impacts “such as change to hydrodynamics and loss of marine habitat and possible increase in surge-related flooding” as well as loss of habitat and sedimentation due to reclamation, pollution of natural environmental and possible spillages.
High street stores copying catwalk trends are fueling a “throwaway culture” which is damaging the environment.
The influential Environmental Audit Committee has written to Britain’s ten biggest clothing retailers to ask them reveal their environmental record, as part of an investigation into how the industry is polluting the Earth.
Companies which have received the letters include Marks & Spencer, Primark, Next, Tesco, Asda and Sports Direct. It comes after the Committee was sent evidence showing people in the UK are buying twice as many clothes as they were 10 years ago at 27kg each.
If you look at Italy’s fashion market there’s much more focus on high end clothing and people tend to save up and buy just one or two garments, like Max Mara coats which are timeless.
Among the least environmentally friendly items on sale are distressed jeans, sequinned tops and dresses and poor quality underwear.
Jeans with rips and holes deliberately added use up far more water and energy than those without, while sequins are likely to have been hand sewn by children and are difficult to recycle.
Poor quality underwear creates large volumes of waste material which ends up in landfill as “ropey” pants get thrown in the bin, she said.
The committee’s latest report also shows ocean pollution from synthetic fibres, as a single washing machine load can release 700,000 fibres to wastewater, according to research from the University of Plymouth.
The global fashion industry produced more CO2 emissions than international flights and maritime shipping combined in 2015, according to a submission from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.
The Committee is also concerned about the social impact of cheap and “fast” fashion.
At a time when the environment is under threat from multiple quarters, a campaign by Castrol Activ comes as a much-needed breather.
Called ‘Protect What You Love’, this project calls upon youngsters to be catalysts of change by cleaning up their surroundings.
After all, it’s the youth that is the most passionate segment of the society when it comes to supporting a cause.
“The youth has the potential to transform the nation,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi while addressing a youth convention in Karnataka once.
Castrol’s campaign rides on this very sentiment, and shows us that when young people get together to protect something, the impact is long-lasting.
All credit goes to the young people of Delhi, Chennai, and Ahmedabad, who teamed up with Castrol in cleaning up filthy areas. The spaces were then used to play box cricket!
What the youth can learn from Castrol’s initiative, therefore, is that it is never too late to be vehicles of change; if they love something, they should come forward to protect it wholeheartedly.
The Seychelles’ Ministry of Environment has described as alarming the rate by which a new algae is spreading and threatening the island nation’s marine life, an issue the tourism industry is keeping a worried and wary eye on.
The algae confirmed as a species in the genus of hypnea, has never been recorded in the island nation.
The Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change has been liaising with different partners, particularly scientists, to identify this species.
This red algal species often turns greenish which can give the impression that is a different species. This is of concern to the ministry because species of this genus have been known to form plaques on coral reef ecosystems where they attack. This non-native species can be quite invasive if allowed to establish in the reef system.
The algae is disastrous for tourism as the whole beach is covered with the seaweed which produces a foul smell.
For now, there is not much that it is being done except for daily cleaning and removal of the algae. The Landscape and Waste Management Agency, which issues contracts for beach cleanings said dealing with the algae manually is arduous.
“If we had the right equipment like a specialized machinery to collect the seaweed, the clean-up would have been done more efficiently as doing it manually is difficult due to the thickness of the deposition,” said Mark Francois.
A Praslin based factory Seaweed Seychelles – which is turning seaweed into agricultural fertiliser – said that due to lack of space the factory cannot collect the algae to see if same can be dried and turned into fertiliser.
The Trinity County Environmental Health Department says several banned pesticides found in an illegal marijuana grow may have contaminated parts of the Trinity River.
The pesticides were found on a private parcel of land off Underwood Mountain Road in the Burnt Ranch area of Trinity County during the execution of a search warrant by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Tuesday.
That’s where environmental health officials found evidence suggesting the use of carbofuran. methamidophos, and avermectin b1 pesticides all of which are highly toxic and known to cause reproductive harm in humans.
These the kinds of pesticides can also have a devastating effect on wildlife, contaminating plants growing along waterways and indirectly poisoning animals that eat plants or animals contaminated with the chemicals.
“Some rodent comes and eats the rodenticide or whatever, whether it’s a mouse or a rat or something, and then something else comes along and eats that,” Waite said. “And there’s such toxic levels in that, that it kills that animal as well.”
The chemicals found can cause a long list of health effects on humans including miosis, blurred vision, tearing, excessive respiratory secretions, salivation, sweating; abdominal cramps, headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, lightheadedness, weakness, exhaustion, chest tightness, epigastric pain, labored breathing, cyanosis, muscle twitching, incoordination, convulsions, unconsciousness, respiratory failure, skin irritation and possible effects on the immune system.
Public health officials advise anyone who may have come in contact with these chemicals and is experiencing any of the symptoms to seek medical attention.
Nearby residents are also advised to use a filter for their water.
The Trinity County Environmental Health Department will be holding a meeting to answer questions and address concerns about the spill .
The role of forests in combating climate change risks being overlooked by the world’s governments, according to a group of scientists that has warned halting deforestation is “just as urgent” as eliminating the use of fossil fuels.
Razing the world’s forests would release more than 3 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, more than the amount locked in identified global reserves of oil, coal and gas.
By protecting and restoring forests, the world would achieve 18% of the emissions mitigation needed by 2030 to avoid runaway climate change, the group of 40 scientists, spanning five countries, said in a statement.
Trees and other vegetation currently absorb around a quarter of the CO2humans are adding to the atmosphere, softening the potential impact of climate change.
While the world won’t lose all of its trees, large tracts of tropical forests, which hold a vast amount of carbon, are still being lost in the Amazon, central Africa and Indonesia. Warming temperatures are also fueling huge fires in forests in higher latitudes, as witnessed this summer when much of northern Sweden was aflame.
Deforestation has been massively reduced in the Amazon, but that hasn’t happened elsewhere.
The IPCC’s report is expected to mention the need for as-yet unproven technology to burn vegetation and bury the resulting emissions underground or directly suck carbon from the air as a way to meet the 1.5C target.
A steep drop in emissions to zero by 2040 would negate the need for “negative emissions” technology that would damage forests’ ability to suck up carbon, maintain local water supplies and weather patterns and provide a home for a riot of birds, mammals, insects and other creatures.
The prospects for averting at least 1.5C of warming appear dim, however, with a co-author of the upcoming IPCC report warning last week the world is “nowhere near on track” to meet its Paris commitments.
We need to reconsider the impacts our preferred morning coffee has on the world surrounding us.
Coffee is a commodity, the second-most tradable commodity in the world after oil. Because it’s so high in demand, more than 100 million people grow coffee around the world, meaning the pressure for fast and cheap goods can often come before the quality of the product.
Coffee is part of a commodity market, which continues to drive prices to levels well below the cost of production, and can encourage producers to generate quantity over quality, forgoing environmentally sound practices in the process.
With regards to production, sustainability is an important element in everything — growing, processing, transport, roasting, consumption — and these processes can impact things like soil health, water supply and even the migratory paths of animals like whales, birds and deer.
Unfortunately, to meet the current global demand for coffee it’s nearly impossible for all coffee to be produced in shade-grown conditions.
Deforestation not only depletes birds of their habitats, but can also cause a lack of homes for several other species of plants and animals, harming the natural biodiversity of any given area and ruining the soil (and even the air and surrounding environment) coffee grows in.
Still, certification is not the only way to ensure a specific type of coffee is sustainable. Getting shade-grown coffee officially certified can also be an ordeal, with international audits, paperwork and cash costs that may not be affordable for small farmers.
Being mindful and aware and knowing about direct relationships (if you can’t achieve them yourself) are perhaps the best ways to ensure your coffee isn’t doing excessive harm to the environment.
Beyond purchasing specialty coffee from companies who source from small-scale producers, purchasing coffee roasted locally (to avoid surplus transportation costs) and to be wary of certifications are recomended. And, of course, avoiding disposable materials, often inherent in our grab-and-go coffee culture, will still make an impact.
No one wants to be undercaffeinated if we have to face a dystopian tree-less planet.
Development is important but not at the cost of environment, Union minister Radha Mohan Singh said while addressing a conclave of chief ministers and parliamentarians of 12 Himalayan states here.
The theme of the meet is “Wellbeing of the next generation of Himalayan people”.
The conclave was inaugurated by Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh, Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat and Himachal Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur.
The agriculture minister said climate change adversely affected the day-to-day life in the country in general and in Himalayan states in particular.
Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju stressed the need of cultivating specialised crops in Himalayan states to compete with other states.
He said violence in northeastern region has declined by 80 per cent since he became the union minister of state for home.
The members of terrorist groups had been forced to surrender in northeastern states which resulted in considerable decline in violence there, he said, adding tourism would increase a lot in these states too.
The Himachal chief minister said deliberations made during the conclave would definitely yield positive results for the Himalayan states.
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