Cigarette companies are promoting health – for the environment.
In a full-page advertisement inside Toronto Life magazine, du Maurier Canada boasts of its new “greener” cigarette packages, which, at this rate, may soon be safer to smoke than the products they contain.
Parent company Imperial Tobacco has replaced foil wrapping with paper and uses external cardboard packaging that “meets standards supporting sustainable forest management,’ according to the ad.
“Small steps make the difference,” it reads.
Gideon Forman laughed when asked about it. Later, when he stopped laughing, the spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment said: “Is it green washing? Yes. “Are they making a product that is still toxic to people’s health? Yes.
“So they are now making a product with a little bit more paper. Big deal.”
Imperial Tobacco Canada spokesperson Eric Gagnon responded, “Our product is going to be in the waste or the dumpster, so what we try to do in terms of … corporate social responsibility is do it in a good manner.”
Heather Marshall specializes in waste packaging issues for the Toronto Environmental Alliance.
“My first reaction is: Isn’t that a wolf in sheep’s clothing?” she said.
