Reimagine, Recreate, Restore – celebrating World Environment Day

5 June 2021
STORIES AND FEATURES

Reimagine, Recreate, Restore – celebrating World Environment Day

05 JUNE 2021

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BAT is celebrating World Environment Day by showing how we are playing our part to live up to this year’s theme of ‘Reimagine, Recreate, Restore’.


As a responsible company, we’re pleased to support UN World Environment Day which unites governments, businesses and citizens around one of today’s most pressing challenges: tackling climate change and protecting our planet.

We’re protecting the environment by using fewer natural resources, generating less waste, and enhancing biodiversity and forest resources. In this way, we can help ensure the long-term sustainability of our business for all our stakeholders.

What are our environmental targets?

At BAT, we’ve been on a journey to increase our sustainability for over 20 years. We have ambitious environmental targets as we strive to deliver A Better Tomorrow™ for all stakeholders. These include:

  •  Carbon neutrality across our own operations by 2030 and across our value chain by 20501
  •  100% renewable electricity by 2030
  •  100% of all manufacturing sites certified by the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) by 2025
  •  100% of all manufacturing sites to have zero waste to landfill by 2025
  •  Eliminate unnecessary single-use plastic and make all plastic packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025.

At BAT, we believe reducing our impact on the environment is essential because we rely on natural resources to run our business. This is part of our responsibility to the wider society.

 

Case Study: Soil conservation in Brazil

Farmers in Brazil

BAT helps our contracted farmers around the world to enhance their soil management techniques. In Brazil, we developed an award-winning farming method that reduces soil erosion, increases water retention and prevents waterlogging, especially when combined with crop rotation.

Said Sergio Ricardo Pinto Pereira, Head of BAT Global leaf Agronomy Development (GLAD), “We developed a new way to plant crops that helps increase yields by around 20%, and boosts farmers’ profitability while protecting the soil. In Brazil, around 90% of our 20,000+ contracted farmers are now successfully applying this technique in their fields. It shows how good soil management practices are a win-win for business and for the environment.”

In 2020, this technique was officially recognised as a best practice in soil conservation by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation – the country’s most renowned government research company, linked to the Ministry of Agriculture. To validate it, a scientific study was carried out and showed this method is capable of retaining in the worst case scenario, rainfall surplus from the last 250 years – far surpassing the 10 years of rainfall baseline needed to be considered a conservation best practice.

  1. We aim to achieve carbon neutrality for our own operations (Scope 1 and 2 emissions) by 2030 and our value chain (Scope 3 emissions) by 2050.