Cradle to grave environmental analysis of cigarettes with emphasis on end-of-life management

The study presents a comprehensive cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) quantifying the environmental impacts across production, consumption, and end-of-life (EoL) phases of a cigarette's life cycle. Emphasis was given to the EoL phase, where the relative performance of littering, open dumping, landfilling, incineration, anaerobic digestion, and recycling was evaluated. The upstream phase was found to be a major contributor to impacts, with fertilizer application and wood-fired tobacco curing dominating human carcinogenic toxicity. The consumption phase emerged as the highest contributor to human health impacts, driven almost entirely by sidestream smoke emissions. In the downstream phase, littered cigarette butts (CBs) were identified as key drivers of freshwater ecotoxicity and eutrophication potential, primarily due to nicotine and other leached contaminants. Comparative scenario modelling revealed that incineration, anaerobic digestion, and sanitary landfilling with gas and leachate capture can yield net environmental credits through energy recovery, while open dumping and landfilling without gas collection retained >90% of the littering impact and resulted in net burdens at the endpoint level. Recycling CBs into fired clay bricks and ceramic tiles delivered the greatest reductions in life cycle impacts, while replacing conventional cellulose acetate filters with ≥90% flax/jute/hemp-based biodegradable alternatives achieved 31-62% reduction in the midpoint impacts. Collectively, the findings identify consumption and upstream processes as environmental hotspots. The findings highlight the environmental benefits of energy-recovering and recycling-based EoL strategies and provide evidence to support sustainable product redesign and targeted policy interventions aimed at mitigating the human health and ecological burdens of the cigarette industry.