A cigarette pack can be recycled. A liquor bottle can be made with less glass. A digital platform can run its servers on renewable electricity. Each improvement has value. None settles the environmental account of the business behind it.
Yet, these improvements make convenient headlines. Packaging gets greener; the company gets credit. The harder questions about the product, the consumption being encouraged, and the costs left to the public can disappear behind the campaign.
As governments prepare to gather in Antalya, Türkiye, for COP31, those questions deserve a hearing. Industries that profit from addictive products and compulsive use should face scrutiny of their environmental claims, especially when their commercial success depends on selling more.
Tobacco offers some of the clearest evidence. In 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that the industry was responsible for roughly 84 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, and 22 billion metric tons of water use annually. A cigarette’s environmental impact begins in the field and continues through curing, manufacturing, transport and disposal. A recyclable package changes only a small part of that account.
Alcohol production also requires land, water and energy, followed by further demands from refrigeration, packaging and distribution. The footprint varies by product and production method. A lighter bottle is a useful improvement. Presenting it as evidence of the sustainability of the business requires much fuller accounting.
Digital businesses pose a less visible problem. Data centers, communications networks and devices consume electricity, water and raw materials. Online gambling and platforms that profit from keeping users connected longer depend on this physical infrastructure, however immaterial their products may appear.
Digital use is not synonymous with addiction. It would be misleading to attribute all data center consumption to compulsive behavior. But that distinction cannot exempt business models designed to prolong use from scrutiny. Companies measure the commercial value of keeping someone online for another hour. The additional resource demands deserve investigation, too.
Greenwashing thrives when a favorable detail is allowed to stand for the whole business.
A claim can be technically accurate and still mislead. Less plastic in packaging says little about water consumption. Renewable electricity does not account for waste. Greater efficiency per unit can coexist with a growing total footprint as sales rise.
Companies should not get to choose the narrowest possible measure of progress and call the matter settled. If they want credit for sustainability, they should disclose enough information to make that judgment possible: total resource use, emissions, waste and the costs borne by others. Those figures should be independently verifiable.
Otherwise, “green” becomes a way to protect the brand while leaving the public to manage the damage.
Recent research in Türkiye shows why that damage cannot be understood solely at the point of sale. In a study led by the Turkish Green Crescent (Yeşilay), researchers collected 98 samples over one week from wastewater treatment plants in seven cities, including Antalya. They examined nine psychoactive substances or their metabolite compounds formed as the body processes a substance to assess how effectively treatment removed them.
Biological treatment played an important role, but removal varied by substance and facility. Some compounds were largely removed from the water. Others, including MDMA, proved harder to remove, with residues remaining after treatment.
These findings have limits. Detecting a substance does not establish ecological harm; concentration, exposure and effects on organisms must be assessed together. A week of sampling cannot describe conditions across an entire country. It can, however, establish a case for sustained monitoring and closer investigation.
What happens after consumption is a public concern. Treatment plants and local authorities have to deal with what reaches them, whether or not its disposal figured in the original transaction.
At Yeşilay, our Türkiye Addiction and Environment Research Report brings this research together with scientific evidence on environmental effects associated with tobacco, alcohol, illicit drugs, gambling and problematic digital use. For an organization that has worked against addiction for more than a century, examining these costs is part of protecting the communities we serve.
We will bring this work to COP31. Through panels and our presence in the Green Zone, we will present our research and open these questions to discussion with participants working across health, science and environmental policy. We want the evidence to inform decisions about prevention, corporate responsibility and public infrastructure.
That requires precision. Chemical residues in water and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are different problems. Yet protecting water resources and improving treatment infrastructure are important to climate adaptation. As resources come under greater pressure, avoidable pollution becomes harder to tolerate.
Climate disruption also affects vulnerability. Disasters, displacement and lost livelihoods can damage mental health and weaken social support, potentially increasing the risk of harmful substance use for some people. Adaptation plans should include accessible psychological support and addiction services.
The responsibility must not be pushed onto people living with addiction. They need care, not another accusation. Scrutiny should fall on production, marketing and product-design decisions, and on the systems that allow commercial gains to remain private while costs pass to the public.
Governments should require verifiable reporting of water use, emissions and waste, test environmental claims against a product’s full life cycle and make producers bear the appropriate costs of preventing and addressing damage. Wastewater monitoring should guide treatment investment. Prevention and addiction services should be part of the wider policy response.
At COP31, a polished sustainability campaign should buy no exemption from those obligations. The question for these industries is straightforward: Is the total harm falling, and can you prove it?
Until they can answer, a greener package is no reason to let them off the hook.
