bat sustainability report 2007 - Environment

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What is the issue?

This section describes our work to address the impacts of our own operations on the natural environment, including our performance in key areas, the way we are addressing concerns about climate change and our efforts to mitigate our impacts on biodiversity. Elsewhere in the Report, we cover our approach to working with our suppliers to manage the social, economic and environmental impacts within our supply chain.

Why is it important?

The manufacture, distribution and consumption of our products, from leaf growing to the disposal of used product and packaging, all have an impact on the natural environment. Most materials used in our product come from the natural world – either from the tobacco plant, or from wood as a raw material for paper and packaging. It makes good economic and environmental sense for us to use raw materials, energy and water sustainability. We are committed to following high standards of environmental protection, adhering to the principles of sustainable development and protecting biodiversity.

We consider it our responsibility to measure, monitor and reduce our impacts and to set targets and report on our performance.

What are we doing about it?

• We will continue to work to reduce our environmental impacts and to monitor, measure and report on our performance against targets on bat.com and in this Report. This will include a target to reduce our CO2 equivalent by 50 per cent by 2030 and 80 per cent by 2050 from our year 2000 baseline of 1.25 tonnes per million cigarettes equivalent;
   
• We will publish a statement outlining our approach to reducing our carbon footprint on www.bat.com;
   
• We will develop performance measures for biodiversity during 2008 and aim to put systems in place to gather the information by 2009;
   
• We will carry out biodiversity assessments in key geographic areas where we operate and formulate corrective actions.