Why Vaping Is So Much Better for the Environment than Smoking

Many people make the switch from cigarettes to e-cigs because they are concerned about the health risks of smoking. However, smoking doesn’t only endanger people – it also harms the environment. In fact, cigarette butts make up a huge chunk of the litter found in typical urban areas – as much as 40% of it, to be exact. If you’re looking for another reason to quit smoking and give vaping a chance instead, consider all the following ways that cigarettes and cigarette smoke are so much worse for our planet than vaping.

The environmental dangers of smoking

If helping to get our environment in better shape is important to you, then you’re far better off choosing an e-cigarette and your favourite vape juice than lighting that next cigarette.

Here’s why.

• Smoking causes deforestation. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest are destroyed each year to fulfill the needs of the tobacco industry. This wood is used to dry and cure the tobacco plants (by fire) as well as in the production of filters, papers, and packaging for the trillions of cigarettes manufactured annually around the world.
• Smoking leads to desertification. Because the tobacco plant is highly susceptible to diseases and pests, growers must use pesticides regularly to maintain healthy growth. Intensive tobacco farming causes the land to become exhausted and sapped of all its essential nutrients, rendering it useless for the cultivation of any other plants.
• Smoking pollutes the air, ground, and water. The material that makes up cigarette butts – cellulose acetate – does not biodegrade naturally, instead taking up to 12 years or more to decompose. Our ground and waterways are full of millions of cigarette butts emitting toxins that harm wildlife. Smokers also blow staggering amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, harming air quality.
• Smoking causes fires. Lit cigarettes carelessly discarded are one of the most common causes of wildfires, along with campfires, equipment malfunctions, and arson. These fires can release huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in a very short time, not only lowering air quality but contributing to climate change as well.

How vaping is better

Looking at the facts, it’s easy to see that vaping is far friendlier to the environment than smoking.

For example:

• Vaping saves trees. While paper is used in all aspects of cigarette manufacturing (besides packaging, every individual cigarette is actually wrapped in paper), the only part of vaping that involves paper is the packaging. If most smokers switched to vaping, they would save millions of trees, benefitting our planet and all the people on it tremendously.
• Vaping creates less waste. Let’s say that a 10ml bottle of premium e-juice equals five to seven packs of traditional cigarettes. In general, a pack-a-day smoker will dispose of 140 cigarette butts (those non-biodegradable ones), while a vaper vaping an equivalent amount will need only dispose of an atomizer head. Rechargeable e-cigs minimize the waste involved, but even disposable devices create far less waste than tobacco cigarettes.
• Vaping creates less air pollution. One of the reasons that vaping is a better alternative to smoking is that, instead of exhaling smoke, vapers exhale a non-toxic water vapour that leaves the air cleaner than smoking does. While we may not have definitive research that quantifies the harm vaping does cause to the environment, one thing is already very clear: it’s less harmful than smoking.

If you enjoy smoking but would like to do your part to help save the planet and leave a cleaner, safer environment for future generations of people and animals alike, do yourself and everyone around you a favour and buy a vape online today.