Good environmental practices are fundamental for organisations like British American Tobacco, whose raw materials come principally from the natural world – for us, this is either from the tobacco plant or from wood as a raw material for paper and packaging.
It makes good economic and environmental sense to use raw materials, energy and water in a sustainable way and theyrecognise that they must maintain a clear strategic approach to managing our environmental footprint.
For many years, BAT have implemented environmental management systems across our operations and we seek to adhere to principles of sustainable development. As a result, they have made good progress in reducing the impacts of our direct resource use. BAT also increasingly recognise the need to give greater consideration to understanding the indirect impacts of our resource use. This will not only help us to better address our environmental footprint, but will also help to plan for more sustainable resource use within business.
Work with the British American Tobacco Biodiversity Partnership has enabled to make good progress in understanding our impacts on biodiversity. They have also made headway in understanding the potential implications of climate change for our business. However, they recognise that need to do more to fully understand and develop strategies to address the wider impacts of resource use.
As a result, the focus of our environmental programme for business falls under three themes:
- Excellence in environmental management;
- Addressing concerns around climate
change; and
- Managing our impact on biodiversity.
What are we doing about it?
Excellence in environmental management
- Our key environmental measures
demonstrate improved performance over
recent years in energy use, water use,
waste to landfill and recycling. However,
there has been a small increase in our
CO2 equivalent and energy use in 2008
compared with 2007;
- We have continued to manage our impacts
through environmental management
systems based on ISO 14001 and to set
objectives through annual environmental
assessments carried out by each of our
companies; and
- We undertook dialogue with our key
stakeholders to establish if our current
environmental agenda is appropriate
in terms of our impacts and external
stakeholder expectations.
Addressing concerns around
climate change
- We have published on www.bat.com
a summary of our approach to reducing
our carbon footprint; and
- We have piloted an energy efficiency
assessment tool for our factories. We are
continuing to implement local and
regional initiatives to help us meet our
CO2 targets.
Managing our impact on biodiversity
- We have developed additional training
on biodiversity for our leaf managers;
- We have developed measures for
managing and reporting on our
biodiversity impacts; and
- Through the Biodiversity Partnership,
a global risk map has been developed
to help in the planning and execution
of our biodiversity risk assessments.
Tobacco Info
Tobacco is an annual or bi-annual growing 1-3 meters tall with large sticky leaves that contain nicotine. Native to the Americas, tobacco has a long history of use as a shamanic inebriant and stimulant. It is extremely popular and well-known for its addictive potential.
Nicotiana rustica leaves. Nicotiana rustica leaves have a nicotine content as high as 9%, whereas Nicotiana tabacum (common tobacco) leaves contain about 1 to 3%
A cigar is a tightly rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco which is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, Sumatra, Philippines, and the Eastern United States.
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the fresh leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as an organic pesticide, and in the form of nicotine tartrate it is used in some medicines. In consumption it may be in the form of cigarettes smoking, snuffing, chewing, dipping tobacco, or snus.
Cigarettes are smoking products consumed by people and made out of cut tobacco leaves. Cigars are typically composed completely of whole-leaf tobacco. A cigarette has smaller size, composed of processed leaf, and white paper wrapping. The term cigarette refers to a tobacco cigarette too but it can apply to similar devices containing other herbs, such as cannabis.
