Trying to quit smoking? Good for you! That’s one tough New Year’s resolution… We all know that smoking is bad for your health, but did you know it’s bad for the environment too? Yep. Those sneaky cigarette companies aren’t just throwing in additives that are harmful to you, but are harmful to nature as well. Each time you light up, you’re sending up to 4,000 chemicals into the atmosphere – things like formaldehyde, benzene and hydrogen cyanide, which are all air-polluting, smog- inducing VOC’s. In addition to the toxic smoke, tobacco farming is pretty shady too. Almost 500 different types of pesticides are used to protect U.S. crops from bugs, and 200,000 hectares of trees per year are cut down in southern Africa to provide the space for curing tobacco leaves. At the end of their life, cigarettes become the most frequently littered item on city streets, where they can be washed down storm drains and end up on our beaches, or slowly decompose in soil, leaching their hundreds of chemicals directly into the ground. Cigarette butts can also be blamed for starting more than 20,000 accidental fires in the past decade. Basically, cigarettes are trouble from the cradle to the grave, and that’s not even factoring in the negative health effects for humans. Quitting smoking is really difficult, but if you won’t do it for yourself, maybe you’ll do it for the Earth. Either way, we wish you luck!