Category: Sustainability

  • Can cigarette butts take off?

    Can cigarette butts take off?

    Chemists at the UK’s University of Nottingham have discovered that carbons derived from cigarette butts have ultra-high surface areas and unprecedented hydrogen storage capacity, which could solve a major waste disposal problem while offering a way to store clean fuel, according to a story on physorg.com relayed by the TMA.

    Robert Mokaya, professor of materials chemistry, and Troy Scott Blankenship, an undergraduate project student, published their work in the academic journal Energy and Environmental Science.

    “We have utilised cigarette butt waste as starting material to prepare energy materials that offer unprecedented hydrogen storage properties,” said Mokaya.

    “This may not only address an intractable environmental pollution problem – cigarette butts – but also offers new insights into converting a major waste product into very attractive hydrogen storage materials.”

    Using hydrogen as a fuel is appealing because the only by-product when combined with oxygen is water.

    Mokaya said that this technique could be developed to replace, for example, gasoline as a transport fuel or natural gas as a heating fuel.

  • PMI is environmental leader

    PMI is environmental leader

    Philip Morris International today was again recognized as a global leader for environmental action in the annual CDP rankings, according to a note posted on the company’s website.

    ‘For the fourth year in a row, PMI is on the CDP Climate A List for taking comprehensive action on climate change and for its transparent disclosure process,’ the note said.

    ‘In addition, PMI achieved A List status for CDP Water, recognizing the company’s water stewardship initiatives.

    ‘PMI is one of only 25 companies that scored an A for both climate and water, placing the company in the top one percent of corporations known as the “A Listers” for both schemes.’

    CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project, is said to be the leading international not-for-profit organization independently assessing the environmental efforts of thousands of companies worldwide against its scoring methodology.

    More than 3,000 major companies submitted information for independent assessment for 2016.

    CDP’s A List recognizes companies around the world, spanning different industries, for leadership in their actions to address environmental risk during the past reporting year.

    Its environmental benchmark reports are produced at the request of 827 investors with assets of US$100 trillion.

    “Climate change and clean water shortage are among the biggest challenges facing humanity today,” said PMI’s CEO André Calantzopoulos.

    “I am proud that PMI is one of only 25 companies that achieved double ‘A List’ status for both climate and water in CDP’s rankings, and moving forward, even more global action is needed and must be encouraged to collectively address these environmental priorities.”

    PMI said in its note that it had made a number of environmental improvements and introduced new initiatives in 2016, including:

    • An absolute carbon emissions reduction of more than four percent compared to that of 2015, resulting in a saving of about 250,000 tons of CO2 per year versus that of 2010, due to environmental improvements in its operations;
    • The adoption of science-based targets to achieve a 40 percent reduction in its carbon footprint across its entire value chain by 2030 and a 60 percent reduction by 2040;
    • The introduction of an internal price on carbon to help the company rank and prioritize its carbon-reduction projects to meet its targets, such as plans to have 80 percent of the electricity used in its factories coming from renewable sources by 2030; and
    • A company-wide water footprint analysis, risk assessment, and set of initiatives throughout the company’s entire value chain enabling it to make step changes in water stewardship.
  • Apple CEO visits Iggesund

    Apple CEO visits Iggesund

    Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Iggesund, Sweden, yesterday to visit both the forest and the paperboard mill with the stated intention of learning more about the sustainability work of Iggesund Paperboard and its parent company, the Holmen Group.

    Since 2005, Apple has been a major customer of Iggesund Paperboard, buying its Invercote paperboard, which is made at the Iggesund Mill.

    “We are proud and pleased to have Apple as a customer, not least because they place very high demands on their suppliers’ sustainability work,” said Arvid Sundblad, vice president sales and marketing at Iggesund Paperboard.

    ‘Iggesund Paperboard strives to inspire next-century packaging with sustainable paperboard products, services and advice that enhance the value of world-class brands,’ the company said in a statement issued today.

    ‘The market-leading Invercote® and Incada® brands are used by some of the world’s most demanding brand owners.

    ‘Outstanding characteristics include superior durability, excellent color reproduction, whiteness that does not fade, taint and odor neutrality and design versatility.

    ‘Established in 1685 and part of the Holmen forest industry group, the company relies on its own sustainably-managed forests to ensure a renewable material for centuries to come.’

  • Cigarette butts a resource

    Cigarette butts a resource

    Cigarette butts can be turned into a resource for killing mosquitoes, according to a story in the Economic Times of India citing a new study by an international team of scientists.

    This method of pest control was described in the latest issue of the journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research.

    The report said: ‘A single treatment with CB [cigarette butt] extracts and silver nanostructures – synthesized using the extract – significantly reduced egg hatchability of anopheles stephensi, the mosquito species that spreads the P.falciparum malaria parasite’.

    Low doses of the silver nanostructures were said also to inhibit the growth of a soil bacteria, Bacillus subtilis, the organism, Klebsiella pneumoniae, that causes pneumonia, and Salmonella typhi, that causes typhoid.

    Normally, the larvae of malaria mosquitoes are eaten while in water by their predators, small crustaceans called M. aspericornis, and, according to the researchers, the predation efficiency of these crustaceans is not affected by the introduction of CB-synthesized nanoparticles.

    Meanwhile, smoke toxicity experiments conducted with adult mosquitoes showed that the use of CB-based mosquito coils led to mortality rates comparable to those obtained with the use of standard coils containing the pesticide permethrin.

    The research was carried about by scientists in India, Italy, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan.

  • Leaf partnerships sought

    Leaf partnerships sought

    Tobacco farmers in Indonesia’s East Java and West Nusa Tenggara provinces have asked the government to expand a partnership scheme between them and tobacco manufacturers, according to a story in The Jakarta Post.

    The chairman of the Kasturi Tobacco Farmers Association (APTKI) at Jember, East Java, Abdurachman, said most tobacco farmers were concerned about how the season would turn out despite their having had a good harvest. This was because there was uncertainty about whether their leaf would be absorbed by the industry.

    He said a partnership scheme would benefit both parties. For farmers, it would maintain a good selling price while for the companies, it would provide certainty over tobacco supplies.

    According to Abdurachman, only 20 percent of the 5,000 ha planted to tobacco in Jember were part of partnership programs with cigarette manufacturers.

    Meanwhile, Mukmin, a Virginia-tobacco farmer of North Pijot village in the Keruak district of the East Lombok regency, said he had enjoyed much benefit after joining a partnership program with PT Sadhana Arifnusa in 2016. “Previously, I was often forced to sell my crops at very low prices to avoid greater loss,” he said.

    Previously, Agus Wahyudi of the Directorate General of Plantation at the Agriculture Ministry claimed the government had been formulating a partnership scheme that would involve more farmers.

    He said that under the scheme cigarette manufacturers would be obliged to purchase local tobacco if they applied for a tobacco-import permit.

  • Growers left indebted

    Growers left indebted

    Drought and extremely high temperatures have decreased leaf tobacco yields by 30-40 percent in the Semberija and Posavina regions of Bosnia-Herzegovina, according to a Onasa News Agency story relayed by the TMA.

    About 104 tobacco farmers belonging to the AD Duvan co-operative this year grew tobacco on 304 ha in the two regions.

    But because of the unhelpful weather, they are thought to have produced 350,000 kg of tobacco this year; not the 500,000 kg that had been predicted earlier in the season.

    AD Duvan director Čedo Gotovčević said tobacco farmers would be left in debt due to the poor yields and low purchase prices.

    But there had been an increase in black market trade, Gotovčević added, with about 60 percent of tobacco producers ‘turning to illegal flows’, where purchase prices were high.

  • Pakistani workers protest

    Pakistani workers protest

    Sacked former employees of Philip Morris Pakistan, Frontier Sugar Mills and Pakistan Tobacco Company on Tuesday took part in a procession and staged a protest outside the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Legislative Assembly building to demand their reinstatement, according to a story in the newspaper Dawn.

    The protesters were led by, among others, the Mazdoor Kisan Party spokesman Shakeel Wahidullah Khan.

    Wahidullah was quoted as saying that the employees were sacked because they had tried to set up worker unions and because they had demanded their due rights from the managements concerned.

    The employees had served those organisations for 15 to 30 years. They had spent the prime of their lives in those industries and played vital roles in boosting the businesses of the owners, but they had been sacked without being told why, he added.

    Meanwhile, the Mehnat Kash Labour Federation president Abrarullah said that children of the employees had been expelled from their schools and workers had been deprived of medical treatment. And the only ‘fault’ of the employees, he said, had been to try to register worker unions.

  • Vuse is boycott target

    Vuse is boycott target

    A farmworker labor group often at odds with Reynolds American Inc. voted unanimously on Saturday to conduct a national boycott of the company’s Vuse, the US’ top-selling electronic cigarette, according to a story by Richard Craver for the Winston-Salem Journal.

    As of August, Vuse, which is sold at more than 111,000 US retail outlets, had a top market share of 29.8 percent.

    Catherine Crowe, a spokeswoman for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee of FLOC, said the potential boycott of Vuse was designed to dent Reynolds’ revenue stream since “it is a fairly new product and market for Reynolds”.

    “Reynolds has still not signed an agreement with FLOC that would affect real change on the ground by guaranteeing farmworkers freedom of association and implementing a grievance mechanism that farmworkers could use to resolve issues without fear of retaliation,” Crowe said.

    Since 2007, FLOC has conducted occasional adversarial inquiries during the question-and-answer session of Reynolds’ annual shareholders meeting as well as peaceful street protests following the meeting.

    The group was not able to protest in May because Reynolds did not conduct a shareholders meeting. At that time, British American Tobacco was in the process of buying Reynolds.

    Reynolds said it had no comment on FLOC’s boycott discussion.

    Craver’s story is at: http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/farmworker-labor-group-votes-to-boycott-vuse/article_83223678-26e5-5473-afe1-7353a2bed47c.html.

  • JT on sustainability index

    JT on sustainability index

    Japan Tobacco Inc. has been selected for the fourth consecutive year by the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices Asia/Pacific (DJSI Asia/Pacific), the worldwide index for socially responsible investment (SRI).

    ‘The DJSI is a collaborative initiative by S&P Dow Jones Indices of the United States and RobecoSAM of Switzerland,’ JT said in a note posted on its website.

    ‘It assesses the sustainability performance of companies, based on economic, environmental and social criteria.

    ‘From among approximately 600 major companies in the Asia-Pacific region, including Japan, 152 companies (72 Japanese companies) were named to the DJSI Asia/Pacific this year.

    ‘In accordance with the management principles of the JT Group, we strive to fulfill our responsibilities to our valued consumers, shareholders, employees and the wider society, carefully considering the respective interests of these four key stakeholder groups, and exceeding their expectations wherever we can.

    ‘With this in mind, we carry out various initiatives in countries where we operate, and will continue to contribute to the societies’ sustainability through the businesses.’

  • Call to end contract farming

    Call to end contract farming

    The government of Zimbabwe should create a bank to provide financial support for tobacco growers and eliminate contract farming, according to a NewsDay story quoting the executive director of the Tobacco Industry Development Support Institute for Southern Africa (TIDSI), Jeffrey Takawira.

    Although tobacco was one of the country’s biggest foreign currency earners and contributed at least 10 percent to its gross domestic product, most tobacco growers remained poor and faced financial challenges annually, Takawira said.

    One of the growers’ major complaints was pricing, but they were concerned also about the lack of government policies in respect of support systems.

    Takawira reportedly told NewsDay in emailed responses that there was a need for the government to establish a special bank to support tobacco farming and eliminate contract farming.

    ‘Failure by farmers to access cash at the banks erodes confidence in the financial services sector,’ Takawira said. ‘The governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, John Mangudya, is on record revealing that there has been a marked improvement in foreign currency inflows into the country driven by agriculture and mining.

    “So what boggles the mind is why then should farmers fail to access their cash. Where is the money? [As] the Tobacco Industry Development Support Institute for Southern Africa, we advance the idea of a tobacco bank.’

    The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Agriculture is said to have conducted a fact-finding tour of the challenges facing the tobacco auction floors, but it has not yet reported in full.