Optimizing our processes: preventing unnecessary waste and reducing environmental impact.
It's crucial for multiple reasons, and it makes sense both from an economic and environmental perspective.
Environmental and health impacts
Minimizing waste reduces environmental and health hazards from waste and associated emissions.
Economic sense
Generating less waste reduces handling and disposal costs. Additionally, optimizing material use lowers indirect costs related to resources and processing.
We consider waste impacts at every stage of our value chain, from purchasing materials and services to post-consumer waste.
We apply a "reduce, reuse, recycle" approach.
Reduce - Eliminating or reducing the amount of waste generated e.g. using less packaging to transport materials
Reuse - Reusing waste materials for the same purpose e.g. heavy cardboard tobacco cases several times
Recycle - Using or reprocessing waste for different processes e.g. turning filter tow into textiles or packaging
All our factories have mature waste management programs, with waste segregated to facilitate reuse and recycling.
14% of factory waste was sent to landfill, getting closer to our target of zero by 2030.
Applying circularity principles
We’re proud of the many changes we’ve made. We have a number of ongoing key initiatives with ambitious deliverables that will continue to improve our product circularity, including allocating necessary resources such as R&D to sustainable packaging and sustainable filter alternatives.
Plastic in our packaging mix is currently only 7% by weight. The use of plastic in packaging isn’t all bad, as it’s a material that’s generally well-suited for the circular economy. Plastic has a number of benefits that we need to take into account packaging-wise to ensure the quality and safety of our products, such as hygiene, freshness, and avoiding contamination. While we aim to reduce the use of virgin plastic further and of single-use plastics, we have to ensure that we are making the best decisions possible without compromising on the quality and safety of our products. Our R&D and Procurement departments are currently partnering with suppliers and innovative start-ups to investigate new materials that have similar safety and quality attributes to plastic that we could use in our future packaging.
Not only will we continue to reduce the amount of packaging, but we also aim to ensure that all of the packaging materials we use are recyclable. A challenge that we face is that local infrastructure in each of our markets plays a governing role. If there aren’t facilities that recycle certain types of material in the market, then consumers don’t have the opportunity to recycle them. We know that structural change takes time, so we are currently researching and investigating alternative, more recyclable materials that will be available at scale without compromising product integrity. For example, replacing aluminum inner-liners from packs with recyclable paper-based inner liners is a great step-change that we are already making. We're ahead of our target to achieve 85% recyclability by 2025 and are confident that we can raise that number to 100% by 2030.
We integrate recycled material into the shipping cases we use for our products, and recently started introducing recycled content into our packaging’s poly wraps, Ploom starter kits and some other tobacco products packaging. While there is constant innovation in the creation of more sustainable materials, it's not always possible to leverage them at a large scale. Some of the new materials are difficult to produce due to scarce resources and cannot currently satisfy our supply chain requirements. We'll continue to investigate recycled materials as innovations are made and make mindful changes where we can now. Our packaging will be comprised of 20% recycled content by 2025. We seek to further increase the use of recycled materials in our packaging, including plastic, where it is optimal to do and to move away from fossil-based plastics going forward.
We're working to develop filter alternatives that strive for excellence in taste performance. Our commitment lies in continuous innovation and designing for circularity to minimize waste, enabling adult smokers to choose from a variety of options, including those made from more sustainable materials. JTI’s cigarette filters are made of biobased plastics — cellulose acetate (CA) — derived from wood-based material rather than from fossil fuels such as oil or gas. Our Company is dedicating significant resources — human, capital and time — to the ongoing research and development of more sustainable alternatives to current CA filters.
We're beginning a phased approach to embed key sustainability learnings into our circular device development process globally. We're at the beginning of our journey and will learn by working on battery removability and replaceability as of 2027 in Europe. We're equipping ourselves with the right tools and knowledge to embed the circularity mindset from the early stage of design development. Our aim is to achieve battery removability & replaceability for 100% of our RRP devices shipped to the EU by 2027.
To educate and engage both trade and consumers on the responsible disposal of devices and consumables, we’ve started take-back and recycling schemes for Ploom devices and anti-littering campaigns for consumables. We continue to focus our efforts on consumer education to help consumers take steps to ensure recyclable products and packaging end up in the correct recycling streams. There's an overwhelming amount of information on sustainability available to consumers, to the point where they’re not sure what to believe and rely on. We want to help consumers make sustainable choices.
88% of our packaging was reusable or recyclable, surpassing our target of 85% recyclability by 2025.
19% of our packaging was made from recycled content, nearly reaching our target of 20% by 2025.
In 2022, we introduced a new Product Stewardship, Circularity, and Waste pillar within our Corporate Sustainability governance model. In 2023, we developed a new circularity framework and a set of targets regarding both products and packaging, including RRP devices.
This is what we commit to:
Research & Development - Embedding key circular product and packaging development principles and communicating responsively
Working with suppliers - Engaging with suppliers to support circularity principles and ensure the availability of circular materials at scale.
Implementing initiatives - Actioning the comprehensive circularity implementation plan we’ve developed to guide all our business functions, regions, and markets so they can deliver on JTI’s targets.
Future-proofing - Monitoring, analyzing, anticipating, and responding to a constantly evolving circularity landscape to ensure we’re making the best choices for our products both now and in the future.
Anti-littering campaigns
Across markets, we're participating in a wide array of initiatives with the over-arching goal of reducing waste and raising awareness regarding post-consumer waste and how to best dispose of it.
Take-back schemes
Our goal is to reduce electronic waste, encourage recycling of materials, and encourage customers to make more sustainable choices. By engaging in these programs, we hope to inspire our consumers to further participation in the circular economy.