Circularity

Our ambition - Reducing the use of virgin raw materials. 

We seek to reduce our material footprint across our value chain and to understand and minimise the environmental impact of virgin raw material use.

In the ‘make’ phase, we aim to use more sustainable materials and increase resource efficiency.

In the ‘use’ phase, we encourage responsible consumption and disposal.

In the ‘dispose’ phase, we collaborate with waste management organisations to enhance material recovery.

Find out more: Read more in our Sustainability Performance Data Book 2024

How we’ll get there

Addressing circularity across product life cycles.

As we continue to strive towards reducing our use of virgin raw materials, we have taken steps to deepen our understanding of the full extent of our material footprint.

Sustainable design

We aim to embed circularity into the early stages of product and packaging design. In 2024, we introduced and began testing an initial set of ecodesign principles, which will provide insights to support the reduction of our environmental impacts across the product life cycle – spanning the 'make,' 'use,' and 'dispose' phases. 

These principles include renewable and recycled materials, efficient resource use, extending product life, and end-of-life product management.

In 2025, we will work to quantitatively assess the environmental impacts of our Smokeless products as part of the ‘design’ phase.

By leveraging these insights, we aim to establish quantifiable design targets, including:

• Using less CO₂e intensive materials
• Using more recycled materials
• Using more renewable materials
• Enhancing durability and product lifespan
• Greater modularity, disassembly and recyclability

We also aim to understand the full extent of our virgin raw material use and its environmental impact. In doing so, we continue to improve our data quality to inform decisions across the 'make', 'use', and 'dispose' stages of our supply chain.

In 2024, we launched the Green Design Tool, to support our product designers and material scientists understand the environmental impact of current and future materials.

Find out more: Read more about our policies and procedures

Rethinking design

How we think about using materials in a smarter and more efficient way:

What we’re doing

We have undertaking an initial analysis that allows us to understand the full extent of our material use in order to establish a baseline for future reductions.

The diagram below is a visualisation of our material inflow – or the total amount of raw materials that make up our products and packaging. Each bar represents the total weight of materials used across our combustibles, Smokeless products and Other Tobacco Products.

We know that reducing our material footprint is critical to reducing the impact of our Scope 3 emissions.

Areas of focus are:

1. Paper, pulp and board: used across our products and packaging at an equivalent of 349,084 tonnes.
2. Plastics: used across our products and packaging at an equivalent of 60,733 tonnes.
3. Metals¹ : used across our product categories at an equivalent of 11,216 tonnes.
4. Critical Raw Materials² : used in our New Category products at an equivalent of 3,050 tonnes.
5. Electronic components: primarily used in our New Category products at an equivalent of 544 tonnes.

The flow of raw materials into our product categories

Our products

• Vapour products: In 2024, we introduced Vuse Go 2.0, a new single-use Vapour product with a removable battery to facilitate better recycling. We aim to include removable batteries for all our single-use Vapour products, by the end of 2029. We aim to have all rechargeable closed system devices to include removable batteries by year-end 2026.
• Modern Oral: In France, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden and the UK, we recently launched two variants of Velo cans certified by the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC), for using bio-plastic or Post-Consumer Resin (PCR) plastic through a mass-balance approach1 . Used nicotine pouches are currently non-recyclable. We are working to address this challenge and are analysing how to increase the material recyclability and recoverability of our pouches.
• Heated Products (HPs): We have removed the polypropylene overwrap for our glo devices and starter kits and replaced plastic inner trays with a pulp-based alternative. In 2024, with each iteration of our glo Hyper devices, we have progressively increased the proportion of recycled material in the packaging. Specifically, the recycled content of the packaging has increased from 34% in the Hyper Air to 71% in the Hyper Pro. For our HP consumables, we have introduced paper inner bundling to replace aluminium and plastic laminates so that they can be recycled where facilities exist. We also aim for new HP devices to feature removable and replaceable batteries.
• Cigarettes: For our cigarettes, we have introduced paper inner bundling, where legally permitted, to replace aluminium and plastic laminates so that they can be recycled where facilities exist.
• Other Tobacco Products (OTP): We are in the process of replacing all non-recyclable plastic laminate pouches with technically recyclable materials.

Shortage in key materials

While we have made progress with most of our Circularity targets, the global shortage in key materials, such as food-grade post-consumer resin has meant that we have withdrawn our target of 30% average recycled content across all plastics packaging.

Addressing this challenge requires collaboration across industries, changes in government policies and investments in national infrastructure.

Consumer education and awareness

Cigarette littering:

• Although most consumers dispose of their cigarette butts responsibly, too many still end up as litter.
• Research shows that education and awareness campaigns can be effective in encouraging responsible disposal.
• However, to change consumer behaviour, anti-littering awareness programmes and initiatives need to inform consumers of the negative environmental impacts of cigarette butts.
• We continue to support such campaigns with NGOs and the public sector across our markets, for example through the ‘Small Actions, Big Crimes’ initiative

Smokeless products:

• Our ecodesign principles will quantify the impact of the materials we use in our products.
• We know that continued partnerships with waste management organisations and consumer education campaigns remain key to managing the end-of-life of our products.
• This global issue can only be addressed through local interventions and a case-bycase approach contingent on national waste management infrastructure and requirements.
• In Nottinghamshire, UK, we have partnered with a waste management company to pilot a collection and recycling programme for all used vaping products.
• With the aim of creating industry-wide solutions, we have set up dedicated recycling collection points in public spaces for vaping products, including pods and devices