According to one expert, the tobacco business and tobacco smoking are increasing soil, air, and water pollution, as well as deforestation.

“The tobacco industry is one of the major causes of global deforestation because it cuts down trees to make room for tobacco plants, which require a lot of insecticides and end up destroying the soil,” Gabriela Jimenez, an expert at Mexico’s National Autonomous University’s Ecology Institute, said on World No Tobacco Day, which has been observed annually on May 31 by the World Health Organization and its member states since 1987.

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Because trees generate oxygen, filter the air, and create rich soil, the tobacco business costs the world 600 million trees per year, Jimenez said the result is “a huge environmental loss.”

As per the expert, one of the major environmental issues is the disposal of millions of cigarette butts, which are often tossed on the ground by smokers.

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“They (cigarette butts) get carried into sewers and contaminate water sources such as rivers, lakes, and oceans when it rains,” she added, adding that because most cigarette filters are made of cellulose acetate, a type of plastic, cigarette butts can take up to ten years to degrade.

Smokers “may do their part by picking up cigarette butts” to help the environment, according to Jimenez.