Symbolically on the day of the fight against climate change, British American Tobacco joined the UN Race to Zero campaign, pledging to reduce the amount of net emissions to zero by 2050. Achieving carbon neutrality is just one step on BAT’s path to transformation, with the goal of securing A Better Tomorrow i and highlighting sustainability as a top priority.
In order to keep the rise in average global temperature at 1.5 ° C above pre-industrial levels, it is necessary to act decisively and intensively at all levels – and companies in particular have a very important role to play in this story. It is for this reason that BAT has decided to adjust and align its sustainability targets with the UN plan, and has committed itself to reaching zero emissions in the entire value chain by 2050 at the latest.
Race to Zero is the largest cooperation program in the fight against climate change in history, which aims to halve global emissions by 2030 and achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050. The campaign involves more than 4,000 companies worldwide, which are estimated to account for almost 25 percent of global CO2 emissions and more than 50% of GDP. With this in mind, BAT’s announcement of its commitment to combating climate change is a kind of introduction to important global milestones in that fight, including the G20 summit in October and the 26th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP26) in November in Glasgow.
“The goal of our efforts as part of the Better Tomorrow strategy is to ensure that sustainability comes first in all our activities. For this reason, we are proud to be able to support the Race to Zero campaign. The move builds on our journey within the New Categories – with products such as Vuse, Glo and Velo – as well as our goal of gaining the trust of 30 million users of non-combustion products by 2025, and generating 5 billion GDP in revenue from the New category, ”said Kingsley Wheaton, BAT’s director of marketing.
“The factory in Vranje monitors and very successfully responds to all set global goals of sustainable development. Only in the last three years, more precisely from 2017 to 2020, the factory’s results in the field of sustainable development exceeded the set goals. In that period, we achieved as much as a 35 percent reduction in waste disposal at the landfill, 56 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and as much as 95 percent reduction in waste recycling. What we are especially proud of is the use of electricity from 100 percent renewable sources and the use of natural gas instead of fuel oil, “said Igor Gmaz, director of the BAT factory in Vranje.
Participation in the UN campaign is just the beginning by which BAT continues its path of sustainability. In 2020 alone, BAT achieved a 30.9% reduction in emissions from its business processes, contributing to a 37.4% reduction from the 2017 base. Also, in May 2021, BAT announced that Vuse became the first the world’s most carbon-neutral e-cigarette brand. At the same time, BAT was named the leader in the fight against climate change in 2021 by the Financial Times, as part of a European selection that highlights 300 of the more than 4,000 companies that have made the most progress in reducing baseline greenhouse gas emissions. on revenues between 2014 and 2019.