Category: Sustainability

PMI Campaigns Against Cigarette Litter

Photo: PixaBay
Philip Morris International (PMI) launched “Our World is Not an Ashtray,” a new global initiative to raise awareness and drive a long-term change in behavior and attitudes around cigarette-butt littering.
The initiative supports PMI’s litter reduction target to achieve a 50 percent reduction of the plastic litter from its products by 2025 (vs. 2021 baseline). The initiative, launched on WorldNoAshtray.com, aims to educate the public about the environmental impact of cigarette-butt littering and inspire adult smokers to change littering habits.

“We seek to make cigarette-butt littering socially unacceptable,” said Huub Savelkouls, chief sustainability officer at PMI. “‘Our World is Not an Ashtray’ is an important initiative in our multipronged approach to addressing this important issue.”

To track progress against its goal, PMI is working with three organizations—Litterati, Cortexia, and CARTO—to implement a data-driven approach and assess the prevalence of cigarette-butt litter across the globe; identify litter hotspots; and monitor the impact of anti-littering activities. A pilot assessment will take place this summer in a pilot city before being rolled out in representative countries across the world in 2021 as part of a five-year assessment.
July 20, 2020
Environmental Leadership Recognized

Photo: Evelyn Chai from Pixabay
Altria Group’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets have been approved for the first time by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). The Scope 1 and 2 target covering greenhouse gas emissions from Altria’s operations is consistent with reductions required to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a goal that the latest climate science says is needed to prevent the most damaging effects of climate change. The Scope 3 target meets the criteria for ambitious value chain goals and current best practice.
“We believe it’s important to continually work to address important social and environmental challenges,” said Jennifer Hunter, senior vice president, corporate citizenship at Altria. “This is why we’ve set a higher bar and reset our long-term goals, including achieving 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030, 100 percent water neutrality annually, and aligning our business with the most ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets designated by the SBTi.”
In addition to SBTi approval, for the third year in a row Altria has been named to CDP’s Water A-List, among only 2 percent of disclosing global companies in 2019, and is recognized on CDP’s 2019 Climate Change survey as a global leader for engagement with suppliers on climate change.
More than 900 companies have committed to the SBTi, and just over 400 have SBTi-approved targets. SBTi is a collaboration between CDP, the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
The SBTi defines and promotes best practice in science-based target setting and independently assesses companies’ targets.
Altria’s recently released 2019 Corporate Responsibility Progress Report details the company’s continued progress on these environmental goals and on Altria’s four responsibility priorities: reducing the harm of tobacco products, including preventing underage tobacco use; marketing responsibly; managing our supply chain responsibly; and developing our employees and culture.
July 10, 2020
Panelists Discuss Diversity and Inclusion

Women make up roughly half of the population, yet they remain underrepresented in many industries, especially among the senior echelons. In the tobacco industry, for example, women account for only 30 percent of the workforce, 21 percent of management and 20 percent of boards.
That represents a missed opportunity, not only for the individuals involved, but also at the corporate level. Research carried out by the FP Analytics Division of the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Group reveals that companies with more women in executive management and on boards outperform those with fewer women in such positions.
Companies with higher shares of women in senior management are not only more profitable, they also are more transparent and have significantly higher environmental, social and governance ratings. According to a 2019 report by the International Labour Organization, enterprises that promote gender diversity are 59 percent more likely to achieve greater creativity, innovation and openness than their more homogenous counterparts.
In the tobacco industry, women are helping drive the much-needed transformation to a more sustainable and inclusive future. Among other things, they are pushing their companies to focus on harm reduction, promoting greener farming practices among tobacco growers and advocating for equal pay.
During TMA’s 2020 virtual conference, an expert panel moderated by Regulation Strategy’s Patricia Kovacevic examined the barriers facing women throughout the employment pipeline and explored possible solutions. Drawing on research and personal experiences, the panelists agreed that the goal should not be to ‘fix’ women but rather to change the way people think about the workforce and leadership.
They also stressed the importance of mentorship, gender pay gap reporting and accountability. And they called on industry leaders to signal that gender equality and inclusivity matters to them—not just because it is ethical but also because it is good for business.
Click here to view this inspiring discussion.
July 6, 2020
The Natural Experience

Photo: Republic Technologies International
Republic Technologies burnishes its environmental credentials.
By George Gay
When Santiago Sanchez of Republic Technologies International (RTI) responded to my request for information about the current state of the RYO/MYO sector, he suggested that I might like to watch a video about how his company had taken part in a program aimed at helping to regenerate areas of Kenya where, for various, often multiple reasons, the environment had become degraded. He warned me that it was “a bit long” but assured me that it was worth watching.
I must admit that normally my heart sinks when I’m asked to watch company videos, but I didn’t find this one overly long, and I thought it was well worth watching. It concerned something that I had known almost nothing about, and it helped me to understand RTI’s approach to its business and its products. The company’s website (www.natural-experience.com/en/natural-world) says that it is dedicated to respecting the environment by reducing waste wherever possible and otherwise reusing or recycling products. “We are committed to quality, human relationships and the environment,” the website says.
Okay, these could be empty words, but watch the video (https://bit.ly/2woh50K) and I think you will find evidence that, at least in respect of the fine line of gum that runs along one edge of each RYO rolling paper produced by RTI, the issues of quality, human relationships and the environment are all to the fore and addressed in ways that might surprise. The idea of an RYO/MYO accessories (and e-liquids) company being indirectly involved in planting trees from the air is, I think, something that would raise questions in the mind of even the most uninquisitive person.
I won’t go into any details here because the video is far more descriptive than I can be, but I shall point out simply that RTI’s support of the nongovernmental organization Seedballs Kenya, through its OCB brand, is linked to RTI’s use on its cigarette booklet papers only of pure, organic, vegan-friendly gum arabic that is extracted from African acacia trees—support that, in turn, helps sustain the livelihoods of the people who harvest and carry out the initial processing of the gum arabic.

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Beyond gum
But RTI has been in the vanguard of addressing environmental issues that go far beyond gum arabic. For instance, the hemp that it uses to produce thin but strong rolling papers is grown organically without the use of insecticides or even irrigated water. And, importantly, the company provides information about its annual needs to the cooperative of French farmers who produce the hemp to ensure that the cooperative can manage its output in a sustainable way.
At the same time, the company offers RYO filters that are made of pure cellulose fibers sourced from sustainably managed forests. They are unbleached and naturally biodegradable and, RTI says, provide a better filtration than is provided by other types of filters. And then there are the rolling paper packs that are produced from recycled paper and printed with vegetable inks that are low in odor and have low-migration properties.
With such an emphasis on respecting the environment, it would be reasonable to expect that RTI and its OCB brand, despite their tobacco connection, would be welcomed as part of the family of responsible companies and products. But that is not necessarily the case. Sanchez told me that the Belgian government has decided that it is contrary to the provisions of the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) to allow rolling paper packs to bear messages attesting to the positive credentials of the papers—messages such as “unbleached” or “organic.” I’m not sure, but I guess this will have come about because of the tortured logic that says that consumers, on seeing, for instance, that papers are organic, will be encouraged to smoke. It assumes that consumers’ thinking so lacks nuance that they cannot tell the difference between organic beetroot and organic rat poison.

RTI has further burnished its environmental credentials with the launch, under its OCB brand name, of the Virgin Paper Roll Kit comprising 32 slim paper leaves, 32 unbleached cardboard filters and a foldable rolling tray and rubber band to store the kit. The virgin paper is sourced from Forest Stewardship Council-certified wood and involves no animal testing. It is unbleached, and no chalk or dyes are used in its production. The gum used on the paper is pure gum arabic, and the packaging is printed with vegetable-based inks.
Worrying developments
Fortunately, Belgium is the only EU member state to take this stance. But its doing so shows up one of the problems that a company such as RTI faces. Because the various states, when transposing EU regulations into national laws, can interpret those regulations differently, the TPD does not provide the consistent rulebook that it might appear to provide.
And this is significant because though as an RYO/MYO accessories provider, RTI is not greatly affected by the TPD in a direct way, it of course suffers the cold winds of the TPD that blow through the manufacturers of RYO and MYO tobaccos. And those cold winds keep blowing. While the revision of TPD2 is still about a year away, Sanchez says, he is already hearing comments about how TPD3 will add further restrictions. And he is rightly concerned because, as he pointed out, the imagination of EU regulators is boundless in this area.
Another issue that is likely to cause problems for the tobacco industry in general is the upcoming EU directive on single-use plastics that will probably embrace the “polluter pays” principle where the polluter is interpreted as the manufacturer—of acetate filters, for instance—rather than the consumer who carelessly discards the item.
Meanwhile, things are also tough in the U.S. where, for instance, the process that manufacturers have to go through to obtain approval from the Food and Drug Administration to put a new or modified product on the market seems so complex as to be unreasonable. Sanchez said that it was hardly possible for small RYO/MYO players to comply with these requirements and that some companies had withdrawn from the market. RTI, he added, had to increase its workforce just to do the testing and create the thousands of documents that were needed for compliance.
Standardized packaging is another issue making life difficult—and not only in an indirect way. Although it seems to beggar belief, two countries, Israel and Canada, have implemented standardized packaging requirements for rolling paper booklets while Belgium has done the same for booklets that carry the same brand name as a tobacco product.
But one of the most worrying developments that will inevitably affect RTI indirectly is the tendency for some countries to close or reduce the tax differentials between those applied to cigarettes and those applied to RYO/MYO tobacco. Portugal and the Czech Republic have already closed the gap, and the U.K. in March moved to reduce the difference.
And, of course, RTI is plagued by the availability of counterfeit rolling paper booklets and the reluctance of many countries to take effective action against such illegal trade. Sanchez estimates that just a small proportion of counterfeit products are being intercepted in the EU and the U.S. but is claiming some success for a unique QR code system that the company has introduced and that allows wholesalers, retailers and consumers to check whether they are buying genuine products.
Looking on the bright side, Sanchez says that RYO/MYO companies are generally doing better than the manufacturers of factory-made cigarettes and that RTI is doing particularly well. But, as always, there’s a catch. He said that RTI had been developing its presence on a number of markets—before, that is, the coronavirus crisis had raised its head. The situation was now complex, he added, and it was just too difficult to predict what the future might hold.

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George Gay is Tobacco Reporter’s European editor, but his territory spans the globe. Based in London, George has covered the tobacco industry since 1982, initially for a U.K.-based publication and since 2004 for Tobacco Reporter. George’s understanding of industry issues, combined with his keen sense of observation and dry wit, have earned him a loyal following among Tobacco Reporter’s readers.

May 1, 2020
Going Greener

Cigarette companies step up efforts to reduce their environmental footprint.
By Stefanie Rossel
While the health implications of combustible cigarettes have been in the spotlight since the U.S. Surgeon General in 1964 published his first report on smoking and health, the environmental impact of tobacco manufacturing has only recently become the subject of scientific research and greater public awareness.
Tobacco cultivation requires scarce arable land and significant amounts of water in often water-stressed areas. In addition, leaf production involves the use of harmful pesticides and herbicides. For curing, farmers often use wood, which leads to deforestation. Tobacco cultivation is responsible for the majority of carbon emissions in the entire manufacturing process, followed by the supply of nontobacco materials for cigarette production and distribution/logistics.
Cigarette manufacturing is energy intensive, with most energy still coming from nonrenewable sources. It is a process that creates—partly toxic—waste and emissions due to chemical additives and nondegradable cellulose acetate filters and packaging, among other things. The rise of next-generation products (NGPs), which often include sophisticated electronics, has added an additional environmental challenge.
In the past five years, a number of studies have looked at tobacco’s effect on the environment, among them a report by the World Health Organization (WHO), “Tobacco and Its Environmental Impact: an Overview From 2017.” A WHO-backed study by Imperial College London from 2018, “Cigarette Smoking: an Assessment of Tobacco’s Global Environmental Footprint Across Its Entire Supply Chain,” came to the sobering conclusion that a smoker consuming one pack of combustible cigarettes a day over 50 years had a carbon footprint of 5.1 tons. To offset this impact would require 132 tree seedlings growing for 10 years. The same smoker’s water footprint (1,355 m3) would supply three people’s basic food and hygiene needs for almost 62 years. His fossil fuel depletion during that time equals 1.3 tons of oil consumption, which compares to the electricity use of an average Indian household for almost 15 years.
To calculate the environmental impact of the global tobacco supply chain, the researchers developed a global cigarette production and conceptual model. Annually, around 6 trillion cigarettes are consumed worldwide. According to the Imperial College study, their production brings about a CO2 equivalent emission of 84 million tons per year, thus contributing 0.2 percent of global total greenhouse gas emissions to climate change. It involves 22,200 million tons of water, the use of 5.3 million hectares of land, 62.2 gigajoules of energy, and 27.2 million tons of material resources annually while creating 25 million tons of solid waste and 55 million tons of wastewater. With almost 90 percent of leaf production and the majority of cigarette consumption now concentrated in lower-income and middle-income countries, the report argues, the environmental burden and risks associated with tobacco are carried mostly by developing countries.

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Focus on minimizing
The tobacco industry has not been idle on this problem, though. The leading manufacturers have been continuously reducing the environmental impact of their supply chains and released the results in their corporate sustainability reports (CSR). However, this has evoked new criticism: A 2018 Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (RSAS) report looking at the environmental externalities of tobacco manufacturing argued that the reports were nether systematic nor standardized (which is true for sustainability reporting in other industries as well), nor were they independently verified. As a result, the RSAS authors claimed, cigarette companies’ self-reported sustainability goals remained vague, fragmentary and opaque, with achievements being measured against self-set baselines or by omitting or including different areas of reporting over time. The study also argued that tobacco companies prioritized ecological modernization of their manufacturing facilities predominantly in countries where they are obliged to by environmental regulations, whereas in countries with few environmental protections, their plants had not been updated accordingly.
This may change, however, with the inclusion of the WHO Framework Convention in Tobacco Control in the United Nations Sustainable Developments Goals, according to the RSAS study. When talking to cigarette companies, it appears that this transformation has already started. Sustainability has featured prominently on the agendas of the world’s two leading international tobacco companies, British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris International (PMI).
“While our management systems address a wide range of environmental issues, we have a specific focus on managing our key issues of energy use, carbon emissions, waste management and water use,” a BAT spokesperson told Tobacco Reporter.
“We are making great progress against our targets to achieve a 30 percent absolute reduction in our direct emissions—referred to as Scope 1 and 2—and a 16 percent absolute reduction in Scope 3 supply chain emissions from purchase[d] goods and services, a 35 percent reduction in water withdrawn and reduced waste to landfill by 40 percent by 2030, against our 2017 baseline.
“With our agricultural supply chain, we aim to deliver a positive social impact wherever we operate. We strive for excellence in the management of our environmental footprint and we are constantly working on new and innovative sustainable farming technologies, techniques and best practices, which we roll out to farmers as part of our extensive agri-support packages. For example, by introducing new technology, such as tobacco seeds that can have increased resilience, integrated pest management, and more efficient uses of water, soil and wood fuel, which can reduce water and energy consumption and prevent soil loss,” the spokesperson said.
Carbon-neutral factories
PMI says its carbon-reduction strategy focuses on three areas: reducing emissions in manufacturing operations, lowering carbon emissions from transport and working with tobacco farmers to reduce emissions. In October, the company’s factory in Klaipeda, Lithuania, became PMI’s first plant to be carbon neutral. All others are supposed to be CO2 emission-free by 2030. “At our Klaipeda factory, we implemented multiple projects over the past 10 years to optimize its energy usage and reduce carbon emissions,” a PMI spokesperson explained. “This includes upgrading utilities equipment, such as chillers and compressors, and facilitating heat recovery to optimize fuel usage for heating purposes, installing a biomass boiler, procuring certified renewable electricity and offsetting natural gas carbon emissions with biogas certificates. We plan to take similar measures to achieve carbon neutrality at all of our factories, focusing on energy efficiency, eliminating losses and switching to renewable energy.”
To reduce emissions from manufacturing, PMI will continue to optimize energy efficiency, including switching to lower-carbon renewable energy sources and sourcing renewable electricity. To get the Lithuanian factory carbon neutral, the company also made use of CO2 compensation, including offsetting natural gas carbon emissions with biogas certificates. Carbon compensation is a controversial issue—opponents compare it to selling indulgences, whereas proponents say it’s better than nothing.
“Like many corporations, PMI could be carbon-neutral tomorrow if we just purchased carbon credits,” the company’s spokesperson pointed out. “But for us, this is the last step of our program, and our focus remains on efforts to address energy efficiency at each of our factories. Our ambition is not to purchase any carbon credits in the future—but to continue developing effective projects to improve the environmental footprint of our value chains. In the case of Klaipeda, only 1 percent of carbon emissions were offset by carbon compensation. This was done by investing in Gold Standard certificates from climate protection initiatives that support more than 9,000 families in India by promoting domestic biogas production to replace kerosene and firewood as cooking fuels.”

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Greater focus on climate change
BAT’s efforts focus on the company’s factories, green-leaf threshing sites and large fleet, which is used mostly for distribution and marketing. Together, they account for more than 90 percent of the company’s direct carbon emissions, according to BAT. “This includes exploring energy-efficient technologies, switching to low-carbon or renewable energy sources, and optimizing our logistics and fleet with new standards for fuel efficiency,” said BAT’s spokesperson. “BAT operates in diverse locations around the world, where the availability of renewable energy, along with environmental legislation, infrastructure, environmental technologies and water scarcity can vary significantly. “Our approach is therefore to understand our impact in these environments and put plans in place to minimize it.”
In its capital markets update in late March, BAT announced stretching new targets across the environmental, social and governance (ESG) landscape. “Our ambition is […] to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, while bringing forward our existing 2030 environmental targets to 2025. The importance of this agenda, and communicating our progress against it, is reflected in our new organizational structure, with the ESG and communications functions now reporting to Kingsley Wheaton, chief marketing officer,” the company said.
For PMI, reducing its environmental footprint is a global goal, the company’s spokesperson explained. “We prioritize carbon reduction projects in our factories around the world based on their CO2 emissions, not only on the local regulatory context. […] Overall, more and more of our factories buy electricity from renewable sources, representing more than 65 percent of our consumption globally. We recognize that the carbon-neutral solutions we develop need to be compatible with different policy frameworks, cultures and even geographical climates. To that end, our central sustainability function has identified a portfolio of possible energy efficiency initiatives and is assessing them on a location-by-location basis to see which make sense for each factory and what results they are likely to deliver in context. The same process will be undertaken for decisions around procuring renewable electricity, as we strive to source 100 percent of our energy for factories from renewables by 2030.”
Compensating for NGP production
Efficient water management is also on PMI’s agenda. The company has implemented the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) standard in six of its factories. “Five more will be certified this year as we continue toward our goal of having all factories AWS-certified by 2025,” the spokesperson said. “AWS is about much more than just reducing how much water we use; it’s about ensuring that our use of water is sustainable, within the local watershed and taking into account the needs of local stakeholders. In March 2018, our factory in Brazil became the first in Latin America to gain the AWS certification. The increase in awareness of water issues within the site along with the implementation of the technical mitigation activities implemented by the AWS plan include the reduction of water use of 8 percent in 2019, 12 percent in 2020, 12 percent in 2021 and 8 percent in 2022.”
With its IQOS heated tobacco product (THP), PMI is the world’s leading manufacturer in this product category. The company, which has set itself the ambitious goal to make the world smoke-free, also markets a range of e-cigarettes. Both THPs and e-cigarettes comprise electronic components that are usually purchased from third-party providers in China. Under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Standard, the emissions caused by these suppliers qualify as scope 3 emissions, which are all indirect emissions that occur in the value chain of the reporting company. In the past, cigarette companies have been criticized for not including these emissions in their calculations. PMI says its updated carbon footprint model better prioritizes its actions and tracks its suppliers’ improvements to ensure that it has more accurate scope 3 figures. “We have included more primary data from our suppliers, an updated methodology and a better understanding on risks and opportunities to reduce carbon emissions. Furthermore, a full third-party verification brings extra credibility to the results.”
The transition in manufacture toward HTP increased PMI’s water usage per product unit across the company from 2017 to 2018. “More energy and water are required to manufacture heated tobacco units, as additional manufacturing steps are needed for smoke-free products compared to cigarettes,” the company’s spokesperson said.
“As we increase the production capacity for smoke-free products, we evolve our water strategy with clean technology investments delivering water recycling projects. For instance, in our factory in Italy, we implemented water recycling technology to compensate for the increase in water typically expected in the manufacture of smoke-free products. In 2018, 73,000 cubic meters of water could be recycled internally (13 percent of the total site water use), with a second step implemented in 2019. The technology that was developed will be implemented at other sites in the future.”
Stefanie Rossel is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial contributor. An experienced trade journalist, she combines sharp reporting skills with in-depth knowledge of the tobacco and vapor industries. Prior to joining Tobacco Reporter, Stefanie was editor-in-chief at Tobacco Journal International, where she worked for a decade. Fluent in English, German and French, Stefanie covers tobacco news around the world. She is based in Germany.

March 31, 2020
Encouraging Transformation

Photo: Hans Benn
An index that ranks tobacco companies aims to hasten the demise of combustible cigarettes.
By Stefanie Rossel
In the end, it will be about the money—that’s one expectation driving the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World’s (FSFW) most recent initiative. To accelerate the reduction of harm caused by smoking, the foundation plans to introduce an index designed to incentivize tobacco manufacturers to develop and market less hazardous products. A good score on the index could help tobacco companies attract new investors.
The Tobacco Transformation Index (TTI) is designed to provide quantifiable evidence over time of what steps the world’s 15 largest tobacco manufacturers—which account for around 85 percent of global cigarette volume—are taking toward achieving a world free of combustible cigarettes and other high-risk tobacco products as well as any actions they take to impede that progress. Cigarette makers have invested millions of dollars into the development of reduced-risk products (RRP) over the past few years, but they have been criticized for targeting high-income countries with their novel products while continuing to market combustible cigarettes in low-income and middle-income countries. The new index intends to foster faster change in these regions, too, by detailing tobacco manufacturers’ activities in 36 countries, which represent about 85 percent of the world’s current combustible tobacco sales and consumption.
“Of the more than 5 trillion cigarettes consumed globally each year, about 80 percent are consumed in low-[income] and middle-income countries,” explains David Janazzo, the FSFW’s chief financial officer and vice president of industry transformation. “Around 87 percent of global nicotine consumption is derived from cigarettes, another 7 percent from other forms of combustible tobacco, about 2 percent from various forms of smokeless tobacco, and the balance from RRPs, including e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products [HTP] and nicotine replacement therapies. Currently, combustibles drive the vast majority of consumption. The foundation’s mission is to end smoking in this generation and, importantly, to reduce the deaths and diseases caused by smoking.”
The index will be published every two years. Using an objective methodology that is presently under development, the TTI will measure various parameters, including companies’ allocation of capital, research and development; volume sales by product type—that is, combustible cigarettes versus RRPs—and violations. In addition, the index will review factual indicators associated with the countries it covers to demonstrate their policies and actions in contributing to a world free of high-risk nicotine products through measures such as tax structure, regulatory policy on RRPs and other metrics.
“The index strives to make patterns and trends visible over time that show the changing distribution of combustible cigarettes versus less-hazardous products,” says Janazzo. “It will give the foundation and all stakeholders a window not only into what companies are saying but also into what they are doing. How will they invest their money in R&D? Will it be directed into more or less harmful products? How serious is their commitment to tobacco harm reduction? We will also monitor companies’ transparency and their commitment to reduction of harm.”

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Countering tobacco divestment
David Janozzo
The index is designed to stimulate competition among tobacco companies to deliver the required business transformation. It also seeks to enhance awareness and engagement among investors, policymakers and others. “We believe investors have a significant influence on corporate management decision-making,” says Janazzo. “The index will provide them and their advisors with quantifiable evidence of how companies are addressing industry transformation, on both an absolute and a relative basis, as an additional tool with which to wield influence and promote change. By creating a direct relationship between a company’s transformation and shareholder value—while quantifying transformation through clear and transparent metrics—we envision a market-driven approach that incentivizes sustainable change.”
The index targets investors who remain committed to tobacco. In recent years, a growing number of investors have divested their tobacco holdings. In September 2018, the United Nations launched their “Tobacco-Free Finance” pledge, which aims to eliminate investment in tobacco. Among its goals are raising awareness of the role financial institutions can play in tobacco control. At press time, the pledge had 151 signatories, among them well-known investors such as Allianz and Zurich Insurance Group, which together represent more than $10 trillion in assets under management, corporate loan books and gross premiums.
Other investors, including the U.K. National Employment Savings Trust, have announced the exclusion of tobacco from their portfolios, arguing that the tobacco sector is a dying industry facing stricter regulation, increasingly aggressive legal action and falling smoking rates.
Exposing their operations in an index by agreeing to release comprehensive and perhaps sensitive data may hence become an economic necessity for tobacco companies. “The Tobacco Transformation Index will rely as much as possible on public and independently sourced information,” says Janazzo. “But some of the necessary data will be nonpublic, accessed through nondisclosure agreement and protected accordingly. The companies will be encouraged to make all such data public, and transparency will in some form be encompassed by the index scoring methodology.” The Index will score and rank the companies, regardless of their participation level.

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From bad to less bad
Janazzo is convinced that the approach will work despite the tobacco industry’s historic reputation of secrecy. “What we have seen in other industries is the power of technological innovation, combined with other influences, to drive change: Coal companies are shifting to renewable energy, waste management companies are shifting from dumping to recycling and reusing and automobile manufacturers are developing electric and hybrid cars, shifting away from reliance on the combustion engine,” says Janazzo. “This transformation can also occur in the tobacco industry. Companies compete with one another and are therefore interested in the actions of their peers.
By actively encouraging and monitoring this transition, the index will over time incentivize industry players to act more quickly and more responsibly than they otherwise would, according to the FSFW. “Conversely, players that do not make the necessary transition will be exposed,” says Janazzo. “As a result, stakeholders such as investors and public health professionals will be better informed and able to demand necessary action.”
Janazzo stresses that the index will not be an effort to spruce up the image of the tobacco industry. “The tobacco industry created a global health crisis and then tried for decades to cover it up. Its poor reputation is well-deserved, and stakeholders have every right to be distrustful,” he says. “But those facts alone will not lead to the end of the smoking epidemic. Indeed, to the extent we allow the tobacco companies to be responsible for changing themselves without external influence, we become responsible for maintaining the status quo.”
The objective of the index, he adds, is to highlight the journey from “bad” to “less bad”—not to reward the sale of deadly products. The index is intended to complement tobacco control efforts, such as the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) guidelines, governmental implementation of which is currently the primary method to tackle smoking-related diseases and deaths, according to the FSFW. “These efforts should and will continue,” says Janazzo. “However, more than a billion people still smoke, most of whom live in low-[income] and middle-income countries. Seven million smokers die prematurely every year. The bottom line is: Change isn’t happening fast enough.”
In its 2017 sustainability report, Philip Morris International (PMI) calculated that if the WHO’s projected pace of the decline in smoking prevalence continued at 0.21 percentage points per year while global population kept growing at 70 million people per year, it would take almost 100 years for the world to be smoke-free.

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Independent
To set up the TTI, the FSFW studied two other ranking systems as models. The Access to Medicine Index, established in 2008, ranks the world’s 20 largest pharmaceutical companies according to their ability to make their pharmaceutical drugs more available, affordable, accessible and acceptable in 106 low-income and middle-income countries. The Access to Nutrition Index, launched in 2013, evaluates the largest food and beverage manufacturers’ policies and performances related to the world’s most pressing nutrition challenges: obesity and undernutrition.
Both indexes are financially and organizationally independent of their respective industries. While the FSFW was set up in 2017 with PMI as its sole supporter—the company pledged almost $1 billion of funding for 12 years—the foundation’s independence is guaranteed by provisions in its bylaws.
For the TTI, the foundation has developed a management and governance structure that supports its impartiality. Foundation personnel are kept out of the index-making process completely. To work out the design of the index, the Foundation in May 2019 sponsored a series of listening seminars and consultations around the world with more than 100 participants from multiple disciplines, including representatives from academia, the investor community, NGOs and tobacco associations as well as agricultural groups. Among other things, they discussed the index’s theory of change and identified and prioritized specific topics the system should address.
“The concern about independence was raised at each and every one of the stakeholder dialogue sessions,” says Janazzo. “The index will be funded by the foundation and will operate independently, allowing for findings that are critical of the tobacco industry. Transparency is key. Therefore, a steady flow of information concerning the structure, design and methodology will be disclosed before the first index is published.”
For development and implementation of the TTI, the FSFW appointed two companies: market intelligence provider Euromonitor and SustainAbility, a think tank and advisory firm. While Euromonitor is responsible for process design, index research, analysis and reporting, SustainAbility oversees stakeholder engagement and seminars as well as program oversight and project review.
The two will represent the official “index team” and will be guided by an advisory panel that is in the process of being established. Composed of experts with knowledge of business and investment, corporate behavior and public health, the panel’s task will be to provide strategic advice on governance, development and promulgation of the index.
The panel will operate independently from the foundation, Janazzo says, and will adhere to a charter that forbids industry involvement. “The advisory panel, consisting of members from various areas of expertise, will provide guidance [on] how the index can evolve over time as it is not a one-report initiative.” None of the panel members will be from the tobacco industry.
In data collection and verification, however, interaction with the industry cannot be avoided. It will be the index team’s job to document and report on the nature of interactions with the industry during the index development and data collection process. Before being incorporated into the index, all information provided by tobacco companies will be independently reviewed by the Euromonitor team.
The first report is scheduled for release this September.
Stefanie Rossel is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial contributor. An experienced trade journalist, she combines sharp reporting skills with in-depth knowledge of the tobacco and vapor industries. Prior to joining Tobacco Reporter, Stefanie was editor-in-chief at Tobacco Journal International, where she worked for a decade. Fluent in English, German and French, Stefanie covers tobacco news around the world. She is based in Germany.

March 31, 2020
Reducing the Footprint

Paula Birch of Parkside Flexibles reflects on ways to minimize the environmental impact of tobacco packaging.
By George Gay
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Most of us rarely see and rarely come into direct contact with some of the materials and activities that are causing the degradation of our environment, such as certain insecticides and manufacturing processes. But packaging is in our faces the whole time, so it attracts a level of public criticism that is perhaps out of proportion to that aimed elsewhere. Tobacco Reporter spoke with Paula Birch, global sales director, Parkside Flexibles, about this and other issues.
Tobacco Reporter: How would you describe the current state of the general environment—not concerned only with the tobacco industry or packaging? Is it, in your view, in robust health, in need of some TLC, worrisome, approaching a crisis, past repair…?
Paula Birch: Since the airing of the BBC Blue Planet II series, consumer awareness of the environment and the role humans have in destroying what is a very sensitive and balanced ecosystem has escalated. The situation in our view is worrisome, and some key actions by consumers and governments alike need to be taken around the world to avoid moving into a crisis situation in the next few years.
Do you think the tobacco industry’s packaging plays a significantly negative role in the environment?
Consumer concern about the environment has clearly thrown the spotlight onto the packaging sector. However, our view at Parkside is that this has been unnecessary and out of proportion to the issue. First and foremost, packaging protects and preserves goods along the supply chain, minimizing waste and the loss of valuable resources. It has an environmentally positive role in its fundamental functionality. However, not all packaging is created equal, and the industry can certainly be held to account in the design of packs that are overengineered, or “overpackaged,” using unnecessary materials in their primary design.
Today, packaging, and primarily single-use plastic packaging, is blamed for a lot of environmental damage. However, the main issue in reality is the consumerist society that we now live in creating demand for convenient and disposable goods, as well as poor human behavior in littering, which creates pollution and marine litter.
Packaging in the first place should be designed with minimum material use—assuring the product is not damaged or does not suffer in transit in terms of shelf life—and with due consideration given to its disposal route. Packaging should always be lightweight and made from renewable or recyclable polymers, and be fully recyclable at the end of its life, or compostable if not. This way we drive circularity in use and avoid the use of fossil fuels, which is clearly undesirable.

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Are the companies you deal with, whether suppliers or customers, becoming more conscious of the need to protect the environment? Are they willing to pay the price of protecting the environment—assuming there is a price to pay in the short term?
Suppliers and customers are clearly addressing their corporate social responsibility and environmental objectives driven by the media, which is filled every day with consumer demands and environmental or climate change concerns. However, it is clear that, due to the higher costs associated with small-scale production, innovative new materials are often significantly more expensive than are incumbent materials and frequently have compromised performance attributes in contrast with those of the industry incumbents. We therefore do not see widescale adoption in the tobacco sector of these newer materials but do see a desire for the recyclability of current polymers, which we strive to provide.
The tobacco industry’s approach to packaging and the environment seems to have been fairly good, but would it be fair to say that it could do a lot better?
Yes, that’s fair, and the tobacco industry is not alone. All brands across FMCG [fast-moving consumer goods] see opportunities to change, but it comes at either a cost or pack performance penalty. The reason why many packaging formats and plastics in particular have become ubiquitous is because of their high-level functional attributes. They have simple structures that, for instance, make them lightweight but at the same time render them robust, puncture resistant, transparent and effective barriers to moisture and aroma. This is hard to replicate with mono-polymer structures suitable for recycling, for example. Innovation will continue and new breakthroughs will clearly be made in time, but if it were easy to switch, we have no doubt brands across the board would have done so already.

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Perhaps it is the case that, even if the industry did do a lot better, that would not make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things—in the face of the problems we must confront. Is that fair, or is it too defeatist?
Clearly the planet is facing a significant challenge in dealing with climate change and we all have to do our bit to drive change. It is true that packaging seems to have become a target for consumer focus due to media attention and that since there are perhaps far more polluting industries—for example, transport and logistics—the focus is out of balance. However, the packaging industry does recognize it must use lightweight, recyclable, renewable and bio-based materials, and ensure that packaging is absolutely optimized throughout the supply chain, in order to regain consumer trust and deliver incremental changes as part of a societal shift.
What changes can the tobacco industry make to its packaging and packaging activities—from raw materials to retail—to reduce its negative impact on the environment?
The key, as outlined above, is minimizing resource use in the first place. Designing with the minimum amount of material and then seeking options that either incorporate renewable or recyclable materials in the design. From there it’s about ensuring that the disposal route is also optimized—the pack should be recyclable or compostable.
What changes is Parkside making to its tobacco-industry business to reduce its impact on the environment?
Parkside Flexibles is a global leader in the production of home and industrial compostable packaging films as an alternative solution to non-recyclable flexible packaging solutions that currently go to landfill. Flexible packaging has been difficult to recycle due to its inherent design utilizing multiple polymers either co-extruded or laminated to create the multifunctional performance requirements it delivers, such as barriers to gases, light, aroma, etc.
Flexible packaging is a fantastic packaging solution in that it is lightweight and therefore extremely efficient from a supply chain and carbon footprint perspective. However, many brands and consumers are seeking circularity in packaging design and it struggles to close this loop. Parkside has therefore invested over eight years in the research and development of compostable laminate solutions that have equivalent barrier, graphic and packing performance to common flexible packaging substrates and has successfully delivered fully accredited solutions for home and industrial composting scenarios. These solutions are perfectly suited to tobacco applications, and we are working with a number of brands that are interested in the compostable packaging format.
George Gay is Tobacco Reporter’s European editor, but his territory spans the globe. Based in London, George has covered the tobacco industry since 1982, initially for a U.K.-based publication and since 2004 for Tobacco Reporter. George’s understanding of industry issues, combined with his keen sense of observation and dry wit, have earned him a loyal following among Tobacco Reporter’s readers.

March 31, 2020
Easier Said Than Done

Photo: Justin Greenaway
Recycling e-cigarettes remains a challenge
By Stefanie Rossel
While vapor products are considered to be less hazardous to users’ health than combustible cigarettes, the impact of their waste products on the environment may become just as harmful. Currently, cigarette butts are the most littered items in the world. Since the 1980s, they have consistently made up 30 percent to 40 percent of all items collected in annual international coastal and urban cleanups, amounting to an estimated 4.5 trillion cigarettes annually being discarded worldwide, according to the Truth Initiative, a U.S. not-for-profit tobacco control organization. Thrown into the environment, they leach nicotine and heavy metals while their cellulose acetate filters take up to 10 years to degrade (also see “Minimizing impact,” Tobacco Reporter, April 2019).
Due to their complex construction, e-cigarettes entail additional perils for the environment. When littered, broken vape products can ooze dangerous metals and battery electrolytes, not to mention nicotine liquid, which is toxic. The remaining plastic parts of the device take an estimated 450 years to decompose—If they disintegrate at all. Studies have shown that they break into micro particles by atmospheric conditions over time. The individual components of e-cigarettes belong in different waste categories, which can make proper disposal challenging.
In the U.S., the world’s largest vape market with a value of $6.4 billion in 2019, according to Statista, the legal situation for the appropriate disposal of vaping devices is complex and inconsistent. Most devices sold don’t include instructions on how to dispose of them correctly.

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Heterogeneous rules
In the wake of vaping’s growing popularity among teenagers, littering of used e-cigarettes has become a serious problem for U.S. high schools. As students are prohibited from smoking or vaping on school grounds, they tend to do so in surrounding areas, often throwing away their discarded vape pens and cartridges as carelessly as they would cigarette butts. Schools collect the used items, which makes them “generators” of waste under the U.S. Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).
To aid the schools in their thankless new responsibility, the Public Health Law Center (PHLC), a tobacco-control organization, in December 2019 published a guideline on how to properly dispose of e-cigarette waste. As generators, the RCRA requires schools and other institutions such as airports and courts to comply with special handling requirements, which, among other things, include that they notify their hazardous waste regulatory entity and fill out a special form to obtain a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identification number.
They are also required to inspect the hazardous waste on a weekly basis to make sure that there is no leakage. Nicotine, be it in the shape of a liquid or salt, is a listed hazardous waste under the RCRA. The law requires generators to ship the waste storage containers, which are not permitted to remain on site for more than 90 days, to a properly permitted hazardous waste treatment, storage or disposal facility. “While recycling the e-cigarettes would make them no longer subject to RCRA hazardous waste requirements, the problem is that, to date, no network of legitimate recycling facilities that recycle nicotine for later reuse appear to exist,” the PHLC states in its publication. “The additional burden on public institutions can be overwhelming.”
By collecting e-cigarette waste, institutions also become generators of lithium-ion batteries as they are found in rechargeable e-cigarettes. Despite their risk of fire or explosions, the batteries are not required to be stored and disposed of in the same strict manner as nicotine waste. The RCRA treats them as “universal waste,” but at the state level, hazardous waste regulatory agencies have developed different standards on how to treat them.
If used or disposed of outside one’s residence and/or accumulated by a public entity such as a school or a business, federal law uniformly treats vapor products as hazardous waste. Should students dispose of their used items at home, however, the situation is different: Under federal law, vapor devices are consumer products designed for use at a consumer’s residence in their residence and can therefore be discarded by them as nonhazardous waste. Instead, they qualify as “hazardous household waste,” which again is subject to state regulation.
To facilitate matters for their customers, several U.S. vapor companies have introduced voluntary take back programs, although some later discontinued these initiatives. Juul, which leads the U.S. vapor market with a share of around 75 percent and, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), sold 16.2 million devices in 2017 alone, currently has no such program. “We are committed to developing effective, innovative and sustainable solutions,” the company told Tobacco Reporter. “We look forward to launching further takeback and recycling pilot programs in the future. In the meantime, we suggest consumers recycle their Juul devices with other electronic waste which contain lithium-ion polymer rechargeable batteries. Juul pods are not intended to be refilled and we ask consumers to not litter.”

Minimizing landfill
Regulation is clearer in the world’s second-largest vape market, the United Kingdom, where e-cigarette sales accounted for $3.2 billion in 2019, according to Statista. Despite the country’s departure from the European Union (EU) in January, it remains for the time being subject to EU laws, such as the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulations, which entered into force in 2014. The law aims to reduce the amount of electrical and electronic equipment ending up in landfills as hazardous materials can contaminate water and pollute soil, and the amount of landfill space in Europe is limited.
The WEEE directive sets recycling and recovery targets and requires manufacturers and retailers to assist in the collection of WEEE for recovery and recycling. Manufacturers pay an annual fee for the safe collection and recycling of electrical waste products. End-users are obliged to dispose of such products not as part of regular household waste, but by dropping them at a dedicated e-waste reception location. This can also be a retailer of electrical or electronic products as long as their shop has a certain size, or the manufacturer. To indicate that a product is required to be discarded under WEEE rules, it is marked with the image of a crossed-out wheelie bin. In 2019, a German court prohibited Juul from selling in Germany because its products lacked this symbol.
Every year, U.K. households and businesses discard an estimated 2 million tons of WEEE items ranging from washing machines to automatic money dispensers, according to the U.K. Health and Safety Executive. At present, vapor products account for only a small share of one of WEEE’s 10 broad subcategories. Listed among small household appliances, they are not even separately mentioned.

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Up in smoke
Despite differing regulations, vapor product waste is submitted to similar treatments in the U.S. and the EU. “Most vape product waste, inclusive of the batteries, goes through high-temperature incineration (HTI), which means it is incinerated at 1,000+ degrees Celsius,” explains Rob Smith, owner and operator of RS Recycling Ltd, a U.K.-based company that offers destruction and brand protection services for the secure disposal of commercially sensitive, difficult, dangerous or classified waste streams. “The heat will destroy the item completely and largely reduce waste volume. There is very little residue—typically 10 [percent] to 20 percent of the inbound waste volume is outbound as an inert ash.”
In 2017, Smith was engaged by Valpak, a leading U.K. environmental compliance scheme that manages the recycling obligations of more than 5,000 U.K. businesses, to research ways of recycling vapor products. The results were sobering, Smith explains. “Recycling an e-cigarette is possible, but it’s very, very expensive. It’s a very small and tricky waste stream. If restricted to a single country, there’s a disproportionate relation of cost and R&D efforts to recycle these products.”
One reason for this is the vast variety of vapor products. In 2017, the CDC counted 565 different types of e-cigarette devices in the U.S. market, 184 of which were disposable or single-use products. While the trend has since shifted toward reusable systems, market research companies nevertheless expect disposable products to remain on the market. It was these “cigalikes” that Smith studied. “The batteries are incredibly difficult to remove from the device, and they are all made differently,” he says.
“The way they are manufactured is that the battery is tightly packed in the stem, which requires a lot of force to remove. The majority of devices are manufactured in China using lithium-ion polymer batteries, which are soft and easily damaged—around 1 [percent] to 1.3 percent of the batteries failed during removal with the possibility of catching fire if not properly dealt with by the recycler. The majority of fires in WEEE treatment facilities are thought to be caused by batteries being crushed, split or otherwise broken, or by arching and igniting surrounding combustible WEEE material,” says Smith.
Battery recycling is all about recovering the rare and valuable metals used for their production, most notably lithium and cobalt. The batteries used in vaping devices, however, are only about one-sixth the size of batteries installed in smart phones, so the commercial viability of recycling them needs to be considered.

Sweeep Kuusakosk is working on a large-scale recycling process for nicotine pods.
A costly process
Justin Greenaway
Recycling a single-use e-cigarette, Smith points out, is about 20 times more expensive than burning it. “The question is whether manufacturers are willing to bear the cost,” says Smith. “There are no mechanical means currently available to take the battery out of the stem; hence a lot of costly manual labor is involved. The disposal of the nicotine liquid is also relatively expensive. Besides, there are toxic issues around that. Typically, WEEE treatment facilities are not used to dealing with hazardous toxic liquid—they have expertise in treating refrigerating gases or mercury dusts and residues, but the toxic liquids in e-cigarette cartridges present a different type of hazard and risk. Even touching the liquid with exposed skin is quite harmful.”
Reusable closed and open systems are much easier to recycle, Smith says, because they have replaceable battery packs. “Batteries tend to be stacked or are built-in in large blocks in these devices. The devices will be broken up by the conventional WEEE process, where a chain mill is used. The machine can smash the vape product so that the battery comes out and the tank can be detached from it, which makes recycling easier.” He adds that the volume of vapor products that need to be recycled is still relatively small, which hampers development of respective recovery processes. “When there are large volumes of a certain waste, it’s more likely that recycling processes are designed for them.”
Sweeep Kuusakoski, a leading WEEE processing facility in the south of England, is currently working on a large-scale recycling process for nicotine pods. The firm is a forerunner in this field, according to the company’s commercial manager, Justin Greenaway. “Working with e-cigarette responsibilities, we understand that the marketplace needs a recycling solution,” he explains. “We have already perfected the removal of batteries, using chain mills and a manual process for the disassembly of devices. Now we design a process for the cartridges to remove nicotine residue, wash out the remainders and recycle the pods.”
The retrieved nicotine fluid will be incinerated. The company had previously developed a similar system for toner cartridges, according to Greenaway. “Nevertheless, it’s a challenging task for us,” he says. “We are still experimenting, but we plan to have the process ready in three months’ time.”
Stefanie Rossel is Tobacco Reporter’s editorial contributor. An experienced trade journalist, she combines sharp reporting skills with in-depth knowledge of the tobacco and vapor industries. Prior to joining Tobacco Reporter, Stefanie was editor-in-chief at Tobacco Journal International, where she worked for a decade. Fluent in English, German and French, Stefanie covers tobacco news around the world. She is based in Germany.

March 31, 2020
BAT Launches Sustainability Report to Deliver ‘A Better Tomorrow’
Today, BAT publishes its new sustainability report based on the group’s evolved strategy to deliver “A Better Tomorrow” by reducing the health impact of its business through offering a greater choice of enjoyable and less risky products to consumers.
The publication is launched alongside the group’s annual report and follows last week’s Capital Markets webcast which announced stretching new targets across the environmental, social and governance (ESG) landscape, including:
Increasing BAT consumers of non-combustible products to 50 million by 2030
Achieving carbon neutrality by 2030 and accelerating existing environmental targets by 2025
Eliminating unnecessary single-use plastic and making all plastic packaging recyclable by 2025.
The group’s new sustainability agenda supports the company purpose to deliver A Better Tomorrow with a principal focus on harm reduction, underpinned by excellence across its other ESG priorities. Together, this will drive BAT’s long-term business sustainability and create shared value for consumers, society, employees and shareholders.
Since launching its first vapor products in the U.K. in 2013, BAT has made significant progress in developing, manufacturing and commercializing a range of new category products. Today, its potentially reduced-risk products are available in 48 markets globally and in 2019, the company grew its new categories business by 37 percent to £1.3 billion.
“Today we are transitioning from being a business where sustainability has always been important to one where it is front and center in all that we do,” said Jack Bowles, chief executive of British American Tobacco.
March 27, 2020
Sifting Sands

Does it make sense to ban single-use cigarette filters as lawmakers in New York state have proposed?
By George Gay
Earlier this year, my wife and I took a short holiday in a small village in South Devon, U.K. We had a great time—thank you for asking—but there was one disturbing aspect to the break, so readers of a delicate disposition might want to skip the following sentence and move straight to the next paragraph. On arrival, we discovered that the operators of the village’s only pub, which is renowned for its cask ales and food, had to close it for a month, including during the week we were there!
Consequently, we spent more time than we otherwise might have done fossicking about on the beach, which is three-quarters of a mile (1.2 km) from the village down a gently sloping valley. The beach was small—no more than 200 yards or meters at its widest point at high tide, but I couldn’t help noticing that in with the considerable amounts of seaweed strewn about there was a lot of foreign matter.
Now I have to be careful here. In saying foreign matter, I would not like to give the impression that I have signed up with the Brexit supporters who managed, despite being in a minority, to winkle the U.K. out of the EU, out of what must be one of the most progressive experiments ever undertaken in international cooperation. No, I remain an unrepentant “Remoaner”—or, in the view of some of our more rabid little-Englanders, an “enemy of the people.” When I say foreign matter, I mean matter that shouldn’t, in a well-ordered society, be found on a beach, whether it is local or from other sources.
I was interested in this foreign matter because I often read stories about how cigarette butts make up high proportions (measured in the number of pieces, I think, rather than in respect of volume, weight or mass) of the litter found on beaches and elsewhere, so I took a closer look. In fact, I didn’t see any cigarette butts, and the vast majority of the litter I did see, whether measured in pieces or volume, seemed to comprise flotsam and jetsam. I also looked in the large container at the back of the beach where community-minded villagers place such material and, again, almost all the debris seemed to comprise items thrown or lost overboard by those on commercial or pleasure ships and boats.

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Banning single-use filters
Of course, mine wasn’t a scientific survey, and I have little doubt that if I visited the same beach in the summer when people were sitting on it, the result would be different. Indeed, I am keenly aware that carelessly discarded cigarette butts comprise a huge problem that is causing much damage to the environment, and, in this regard, I was interested in returning home to read a report from Jan. 17 in the Democrat and Chronicle about a proposed bill (Tobacco Product Waste Reduction Act) aimed at banning, from Jan. 1, 2022, the sale in New York state of single-use cigarette filters, whether fixed or attachable (and single-use e-cigarettes). According to the story, the central claims made by the bill’s sponsors were that “filters on cigarettes do not make them any safer and only do damage to the environment.” They were said to comprise a polluting form of litter.
Such comments, which have been made many times in the past, cannot be dismissed. In fact, the environmental objections to filters are undeniable, and I think it would be a brave person who is willing to say, categorically, that cigarette filters make smoking tobacco less risky than it would otherwise be. Additionally, it has been argued in the past that filters give smokers a false sense of at least partial protection and therefore undermine attempts at quitting.
In researching this piece, I perused a few scientific papers to which my attention was drawn, but I did not read anything that would lead me to conclude that there was no doubt that the addition of filters to cigarettes definitely improved health outcomes for smokers. I have to add a number of caveats here, however. I am not a scientist, and I did not read the papers from start to finish. In addition, the papers seemed to have been primarily concerned with comparing the toxins in the mainstream smoke of filtered regular and “low-tar” cigarettes. They did not specifically compare unfiltered cigarettes with filtered cigarettes.
Importantly, given the New York state proposal, the papers I read seemed to throw no light on whether the level of risk that an individual smoker faces is determined by the volume of tobacco smoke she inhales over a lifetime of smoking, no matter the tar or constituent level of the smoke she inhales, given the current range of such tar and constituent levels or whether it is determined by the tar or constituent level of the smoke she inhales each time she smokes. Or, put another way, I’m still no wiser as to whether a person who smokes 20 filtered cigarettes daily that each deliver 4 mg of tar faces the same smoking-related risk as another person who smokes five unfiltered cigarettes daily that each deliver 16 mg of tar.
One other point is that I am reliably told that acetate filters are designed and constructed to retain, in respect of given products, specified amounts of the tar and nicotine that would otherwise be delivered as part of the mainstream smoke as measured by standard testing machines. And there can be no doubt that such filters do protect or partially protect smokers from some toxic chemicals. There are, however, at least two problems with this idea, as far as I can see. It seems that because of the complexity of the chemistry of burning tobacco, it is not possible to link lower toxicity with lower risk until, that is, you get down to no toxicity. And there seems to be a tacit admission of this in the multiplicity of filters available. If risk were known to be reduced significantly by using a particular filter that took out certain or certain levels of a known toxin or toxins, all manufacturers would surely use that filter—if not on moral grounds then because of the fear of being prosecuted, notwithstanding competitive pressures.

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Counterintuitive
Nevertheless, there is a problem here for those supporting this bill. My overall reading would be that while the science doesn’t support unreservedly the health benefits of filters, it certainly doesn’t support the health benefits to smokers of removing them. Are the bill’s supporters so convinced of the lack of health benefits of filters that they would be willing to ban the sale of filtered cigarettes, something that has been suggested but not acted upon in the past? Without cast iron evidence, surely, as has been said many times before, discouraging the use of cigarette filters is just too counterintuitive; the status quo is just too comfortable. I mean, look at the goo that is present in a filter after a cigarette has been smoked. Surely it is better that the goo remains in the filter and does not pass into the lungs?
Well, I suppose that depends on how you look at things—from the point of view of the individual smoker or society at large. (Those of a delicate disposition might like to skip the next sentence too.) Looked at from the perspective of society in general and the environment in which it exists, it might be better that the goo is filtered only through a human body before being evacuated as part of the smoker’s waste products than held by an acetate filter from which it can presumably leach into the environment directly.
Of course, it is important not to get carried away with the idea that banning cigarette filters would help the environment. With an unfiltered cigarette, the tobacco rod acts as a filter of sorts, and when the end of such a cigarette is discarded, it will also contain leachable goo, though probably not as much as that in a bespoke filter. (There is a way to overcome most of this problem, but I doubt that many lawmakers would try to legislate that smokers should be made to smoke their cigarettes right to the bitter end, holding the last morsel with a clip as is superbly demonstrated by The Dude in The Big Lebowski.)
A more powerful argument against filters, in my opinion, is one that is made less often. Without any evidence, I would suggest that filters, especially those used to help reduce tar deliveries to the low single figures, are complicit in helping young people take up smoking. A first cigarette without a filter must be a vastly different experience to a first cigarette with a filter that delivers only 1 mg or 2 mg of tar. If all that is available to you are unfiltered cigarettes, you really have to work at getting to like smoking, and this, of course, has implications when considering population-wide as well as individual health outcomes.
Responses
This brings us to another couple of points: What would be the reaction of cigarette manufacturers and consumers to the proposed ban, which would apply only to sales in New York state? Presumably, manufacturers would be willing to put on the market only those unfiltered products already available. Given that the major tobacco manufacturers are trying to encourage tobacco users in the direction of smokeless products of various types, they would surely be reluctant to divert investment resources toward putting new unfiltered cigarettes through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) process.
Presumably, while New York state was alone in requiring unfiltered cigarettes, manufacturers would concentrate there on marketing roll-your-own and make-your-own tobaccos, and, more likely, on their next-generation smokeless products. This would presumably open up opportunities for black market operators bringing in and selling filtered cigarettes illegally to the detriment of local retailers and tax revenues. While another business opportunity would be available to anybody who could develop easy to use, multi-use and “effective” filters.
And what would consumers do? Perhaps they would get used to unfiltered cigarettes or multi-use filters, or perhaps the switch to such cigarettes, especially if combined with a switch to low-nicotine tobacco, would be the final straw, and they would quit, in which case the legislation would have been successful in one regard and would be taken up by other states. But they could bring in filtered cigarettes from elsewhere, I suppose, paying the appropriate duties or buy them from black market operators.
What this will come down to, surely, is not the health of smokers because that is in dispute. And it is not primarily about the biodegradability of the filters because the faster they degrade, the faster the toxins they contain will be released. If the environment is to be protected, which is the main concern here, filter butts need to be disposed of properly, at which point biodegradability might become an important secondary issue. I believe that a number of companies are putting considerable efforts into the proper disposal and biodegradability of butts, but those efforts need to be stepped up several gears if this is to remain a voluntary undertaking. It has been a work in progress for too long. I’m certain that it won’t have been missed by the legislators and their advisers in New York state that the idea of developing self-extinguishing cigarettes was always such a work in progress until legislation put a rocket under that project.
George Gay is Tobacco Reporter’s European editor, but his territory spans the globe. Based in London, George has covered the tobacco industry since 1982, initially for a U.K.-based publication and since 2004 for Tobacco Reporter. George’s understanding of industry issues, combined with his keen sense of observation and dry wit, have earned him a loyal following among Tobacco Reporter’s readers.

March 1, 2020