What is best for the environment: using matches or using a lighter?

 A lighter is a portable device used to create a flame and to ignite a variety of combustible materials, such as cigars, fuel stoves, fireworks, candles or cigarettes, whereas a match is a tool for starting a fire. Now the question arises what is best for the environment? Below is a comparison of lighters and matches.

Lighters 

You can throw away standard disposable lighters when they run out of gas. When this happens, they will exist in our environment forever. After use, disposable lighters will either make their way to landfill, litter on streets, get washed into the ocean, and devastatingly can make their way into the bellies of seabirds. Ninety percent of seabirds eat up plastic. Once they eat up, sharp pieces of plastic can kill them by puncturing interior organs. When a bird consumes several portions of plastic, there is little room for actual food, which can cause starvation.

Matches

Matches made from wooden are fully biodegradable. Matches usually do not contribute to our growing world waste problem, but their product comes with a different set of environmental issues. Usually made from white pine or aspen, matches require the destruction of trees for their production. An average aspen tree can create 1 million matches. While this might sound like a lot, when you multiply this by the wide variety of matches produced every year, it will become pretty a considerable number. 

According to the World Health Organization, people smoke about 15 billion cigarettes every day worldwide. If every smoker has to light their cigarettes using matches, it will equate to about 15,000 trees cut down every single day. You use matches only once before destroying, whereas you throw away disposable gasoline lighters after the fuel runs out.

Which is better to use matches or lighters?

Matches take longer to light, but, are better. Lighters that use lighter fluid (i.e. affordable disposables) are horrible for cigars and pipes because they burn too hot consequently ruining the smoke, plus it leaves a taste. For cigarettes, it would not relay what you use because they are not about the experience.

Final Thoughts

Why do most people buy matches when lighters are so affordable and take up much less space? Lighters burn if you need to use them for longer than 10 seconds. Therefore, it is usually easier to start a fire with matches. You can light things from far away with matches.