uk bat.com - Environmental management

Environmental management
For our companies, good environmental practice is good business practice

Our comprehensive Environment, Health & Safety (EHS) management system has been in place for many years and is based on international standards, including ISO 14001. At end 2012, 28 locations across all regions were certified to the ISO 14001 environmental standard. We also have an internal reporting system for monitoring Group-wide environmental performance.

Each of our companies has an EHS Steering Committee, with overall environmental responsibility held by the General Manager or site manager. EHS is also a standing agenda item for management meetings and governance committees at area, regional and global levels. This has raised awareness of EHS risks across our business and aims to create a consistent approach for our companies in managing them.

Our Group Operations Director has overall responsibility for environmental management, and responsibility for our Environment Policy is held by the Management Board.

The Policy applies across all our activities including our supply chains and requires our companies, as well as complying with all applicable laws and regulations, to understand the impacts on the environment in which they operate and proactively put in place plans to minimise these impacts; manage, monitor and report on environmental performance; include environmental considerations in our product design; and work with suppliers and business partners to share best practice and reduce the impacts of our products and services across the total lifecycle.

Group Environment Policy (81 kb) Opens in new window

Environmental management is also an important part of our integrated supply chain sustainability strategy, which you can read about in Supply chain management.

In 2012, our Group Environment, Occupational Health and Safety expenditure in 2012 was £40.4 million (£38.9 million in 2011) and there were two reported fines for environmental non-compliance in Malaysia (£732) and the Caribbean (£21,639).

Reducing our impacts

We are working to address both our immediate environmental impacts and the likely environmental pressures on the business in the future. This involves risk assessments, performance management and making our operations more efficient.

Our key focus areas are on minimising energy consumption, reducing our carbon footprint, and securing the resources we need for the long term. To assess our environmental efficiency, we set targets relative to the volume of cigarettes we produce.

Our long-term targets to cut carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions by 50% by 2030 and by 80% by 2050 from our year 2000 baseline are in line with UK Government targets. We have already made significant progress, having achieved a 41% CO2e reduction from baseline.

To measure and manage our future environmental performance, in 2012, we developed new five-year targets for CO2e, energy and water use, as well as year-on-year targets for waste:

  • Reduce our CO2e emissions towards our 2017 milestone of 0.78 tonnes per million cigarettes equivalent produced, 43% lower than our 2000 baseline.
  • Reduce our energy use towards our 2017 target of 9.82 gigajoules per million cigarettes equivalent produced, 17% lower than our 2007 baseline.
  • Reduce our water use towards our 2017 target of 3.6 cubic metres per million cigarettes equivalent produced, 26% lower than our 2007 baseline.
  • Sustain our waste to landfill at no more than 0.016 tonnes per million cigarettes equivalent produced, 36% lower than our 2007 baseline, and recycle at least 85% of our waste.

To help achieve these challenging targets, we will be rolling out a number of energy and CO2e reduction projects in 2013, and will continue to explore renewable and low-carbon energy options for the longer term. We will also be conducting detailed assessments of long-term water supply and demand requirements in the ‘high-risk’ places in which we operate.

All our Group targets, as well as an overview of our performance in 2012 against our key measures, can be viewed in progress against our goals. Performance charts can be viewed at www.bat.com/sustainability/data Opens in new window.