This month, ahead of World No Tobacco Day on May 31, the World Health Organization released a new report on the attempts by multinational tobacco companies to portray themselves as good, environmentally conscious corporate citizens. It comes on the back of previous reports revealing, in detail, the astonishing amount of pollution, waste, energy and illness created by tobacco companies.
The latest report accuses Big Tobacco of ‘greenwashing’: “They attempt to portray themselves as a sustainable and eco-friendly industry, but this couldn’t be further from the truth,” said Dr Rüdiger Krech, director of the Department of Health Promotion at the World Health Organization (WHO). For example, some 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered every year, but tobacco company Philip Morris International promotes its series of volunteer beach clean-ups as addressing the issue.
Environmental legislation may be a new way to tackle the global problem of tobacco use, “a threat to human development as a whole”, according to the WHO. Litter levies and forcing tobacco companies to clean up their own mess are emerging tools to stop the tobacco free ride.
