Swedish Match welcomes the development of increased environmental awareness and sees it as an incentive for the Group to continuously improve and find new ways to reduce its environmental impact.
For Swedish Match, environmental sustainability implies working conscientiously and responsibly to reduce the Group’s negative environmental impacts. Although the production processes and raw materials used in the tobacco industry generally have limited environmental impact, improvements and savings from more efficient uses of resources can have positive direct benefits on the sustainability and profitability of the Group as well as cut down on the Group’s potential negative impacts on the environment. Approximately 80 percent of the raw materials used within the Group are renewable, and environmentally harmful substances are only handled to a limited extent during production.
Swedish Match is of the view that energy consumption, freight transport and business travel, waste management, and water sourcing/emissions have the greatest potential environmental impacts for the Group. With regard to energy consumption, sources of energy must be taken into account, as well as logistics, in order to reduce the Group’s environmental footprint.
During 2011, as part of its ongoing stakeholder dialogue, stakeholders were asked to provide input into environmental areas that they believed to be the most important for Swedish Match. Responses to this stakeholder engagement confirmed an alignment between the Company’s environmental focus areas and important areas for stakeholders. With input from this stakeholder dialogue, Swedish Match has prioritized the reporting and follow up on a number of environmental indicators, such as energy consumption, emissions to air and water, waste management, and water sourcing and use.