another reason to quit?

By now one would have to assume that almost everyone knows all of the very compelling health benefits to quitting smoking. Longer life must be an appealing concept to most of us, but in case anyone out there needs another reason to kick the habit, why not consider the negative impact that tobacco use has on our environment?

According to an article in Vancouver's 24 Hours on Monday, clean up crews at East Vancouver's own Trout Lake have picked up an astonishing 208 000 cigarette butts from the shoreline over the past year. In my own relentless efforts to make my workplace go tobacco free, I've learned a bit more about the large and ugly footprint left on our planet by the cultivation and use of tobacco products.

Cigarette butts are made of cellulose acetate, a material with extremely poor biogradability which means that we are stuck with them for an awefully long time. In 2003 in the United States, San Diego's Sonoma Beach decided to go completely smoke free. Prior to that, like our own Trout Lake, officials estimated that 50 to 60% of the beaches litter consisted of cigarette butts. In Canada, some 2 billion empty cigarette packages and 50 billion butts are thrown away (many carelessly) every year and worldwide, it is estimated that 954 million kilograms of butts are discarded annually.

Without even getting into the further environmental damage caused through the cultivation of tobacco, again I have to ask... Do you really need another reason to quit smoking?