Written evidence submitted by Japan Tobacco International [LIT 096]
About Japan Tobacco International
Japan Tobacco International (JTI) is part of the Japan Tobacco group of companies, a leading international tobacco product manufacturer.
JTI has its UK headquarters in Weybridge, Surrey, and has a long-standing and significant presence in the UK.
Its cigarette brand portfolio includes Benson & Hedges, Silk Cut, Mayfair, Sovereign and Sterling, as well as a number of other tobacco products including roll-your-own tobacco (RYO), also known as hand-rolling tobacco (such as Amber Leaf), cigars (such as Hamlet) and pipe tobacco (such as Condor). JTI manufactures product for the UK market at sites in the UK (in Northern Ireland) and other EU Member States (Germany, Romania and Poland).
In the UK alone, JTI employs over 1,800 people. JTI’s excise contributions on its tobacco products amounted to around £3.96 billion in 2013.
Gallaher Limited is the registered trading company of JTI in the UK.
Address
JTI, Members Hill
Brooklands Road
Weybridge
Surrey
KT13 0QU
Confidentiality
JTI is happy for this consultation response to be made public.
JTI would welcome the opportunity to contribute further to the Committee’s enquiry, either in writing, or in person.
Introduction
JTI’s Position
Smoking related litter is an obvious problem and JTI takes very seriously the need to encourage individuals to dispose of their litter in a way that does not negatively impact the environment. As a company, our main focus has been directed at providing the means of responsible and safe cigarette litter disposal for those adults who choose to use our products. However, we acknowledge that some smokers may discard cigarette ends and packets without regard for the environment, and more needs to be done to address this.
Around 19.8% of the UK’s adult population currently chooses to smoke – almost 10 million people[1]. Sadly, some smokers fail to dispose of their litter responsibly by failing to use bins and ashtrays. This situation is complicated by the unique nature of smoking related litter, which often needs to be extinguished before it can be disposed of, and is made much worse where the proper facilities for safe disposal are not available.
The ban on smoking in indoor public spaces has driven smokers outside, often simply to the street, where the proper facilities to help smokers to make responsible choices about disposing of their litter are often not available.
For this reason JTI believes that the correct approach to tackling cigarette litter is threefold:
- Educational campaigns to promote responsible behaviour;
- Increased provision of litter disposal infrastructure such as bins and ashtrays; and
- Comprehensive enforcement of existing penalties for littering.
JTI believes that only when smokers have been properly educated about the damage caused by smoking-related litter, and only when proper facilities have been made available for its safe disposal, can fines or other penalties be legitimately pursued.
Corporate Responsibility
JTI is committed to being a responsible corporate citizen, and accepts that solving the issue of smoking-related litter involves businesses, government, smokers and wider society working together.
For its part, JTI takes positive action in its markets all over the world, including the UK, to reduce smoking litter through public education and the provision of infrastructure to help smokers to behave responsibly – you can see some examples of our work in the International Case Studies in Appendix A. JTI is also pro-active in addressing the issue within the UK, however, sadly, our ability to act responsibly is increasingly being limited by the spread of the entirely voluntary Local Government Declaration on Tobacco Control (the Declaration), and its misinterpretation. A copy of the Declaration is in Appendix B. The problems which have arisen as a result of the Declaration are explained in greater detail below, along with some policy options which may help to solve them.
JTI and CPRE
JTI UK is proud to work with the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), in support of their “Stop the Drop” anti-littering campaign, across a number of locations and areas or work by providing infrastructure and by enabling employee volunteering.
Employee Volunteering
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With support from CPRE, JTI has begun encouraging its workforce right across the UK to use group litter-picks as a team-building activity as part of their continuing professional development. As well as providing employees with a fun and active way to help improve our environment, the picks also educate employees and increase wider awareness of the problem of smoking related litter and have helped to encourage several colleagues to become advocates for our anti-litter activities.
So far in 2014 more than 80 employees have signed up, and the results of each litter-pick are uploaded to CPRE and CleanupUK’s Litter Action website – http://www.litteraction.org.uk/jti-litter-pickers-
The Middlewich Project
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In late 2013, working with CPRE and the Middlewich Clean Team (MCT), JTI funded a pilot scheme to install 32 cigarette bins in litter hotspots around the Cheshire town of Middlewich. Monitoring of the sites, undertaken by Keep Britain Tidy, both before and after the installation has shown a reduction in smoking related litter of 71% (based on monitoring commissioned by JTI and CPRE, and conducted by Keep Britain Tidy).
Pocket Ashtrays
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Since 2006 JTI (and Gallaher before its acquisition in 2007) has distributed hundreds of thousands of Stub-Tidy portable ashtrays each year. For 2014, to reflect the growing strength of our partnership, JTI and CPRE will distribute around 100,000 “Stub-Tidies”, co-branded by JTI and CPRE’s “Stop the Drop” campaign. The ashtrays will be given away to smokers either through traditional point of sale contact, through JTI’s presence at festivals and other events, through JTI’s consumer services team, or through CPRE’s nationwide network of branches and volunteers. The aim is to provide smokers with a safe and clean way to dispose of their cigarette butts.
All Elements of Society Working Together
JTI is hugely excited to be working with a partner like CPRE which has an outstanding reputation for delivering real impact over the long-term, and our relationship is growing from strength to strength. There are a number of areas where our partnership can help to deliver our shared goal of reducing the problem of smoking-related litter but our work is fundamentally limited until it has the support of the government and local authorities.
For example, the infrastructure project in Middlewich has been preceded by several failed attempts where local community groups and/or housing associations have been keen to participate but where, despite initial enthusiasm, the local authority has pulled out. In Middlewich the local authority, Cheshire East Council, also felt unable to participate in or support the scheme so MCT worked with the local Pubwatch group to ensure that volunteers and local pub staff would take responsibility for emptying the bins.
Clearly, delivering the kind of long-term change that is needed requires all elements of society to play their part but, as the following sections will show, in some ways the government is currently working actively against that goal.
JTI and Keep Britain Tidy
The Love Where You Live Campaign
JTI’s relationship with Keep Britain Tidy (KBT) began with the launch of the “Love Where You Live” campaign (LWYL). The campaign began in spring 2012 and was intended to take long-term action to permanently change littering behaviour for the better by 2020. JTI was a founding partner of the project, along with Keep Britain Tidy, McDonalds, Wrigley, Imperial Tobacco and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). JTI made an initial financial commitment of £80,000.00 to fund three pathfinder projects designed to reduce smoking-related litter by increasing the provision of cigarette disposal infrastructure.
The initial working group broke down because DEFRA felt that the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) prevented it from participating alongside tobacco companies. JTI believes that this is based on a misinterpretation of the FCTC, deliberately fostered by tobacco control lobbyists with the objective of preventing tobacco manufacturers from behaving as responsible corporate citizens.
Article 5.3 of the FCTC provides that the parties must act to protect their “public health policies with respect to tobacco control” “from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law.” It does not suggest the tobacco industry should be completely excluded from the development and implementation of policy or from other forms of engagement. Rather, it rightly seeks to protect the process of developing public health policies from undue influence. Where there are areas of mutual concern, including tackling the problem of cigarette litter, working with JTI does not breach Article 5.3 and JTI can contribute to the development of effective policies and strategies.
Despite this breakdown of the working group, KBT continued to push ahead with the LWYL agenda. But, as the removal of government funding fundamentally changed the scope of KBT’s involvement, it became clear that the original goals of engaging with 3,000 organisations and 3,000,000 people by 2014 were not going to be met.
Portable “Stub-Tidy” Ashtrays
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As a subsequent, further commitment to the objectives of the LWYL programme JTI produced 100,000 new reusable “Stub-Tidy” portable ashtrays, co-branded by JTI, KBT and the LWYL campaign. The intention was to distribute these through both JTI and its sales force, using their relationships with retailers to reach tobacco consumers directly, and through the network of volunteers aligned to the LWYL campaign.
Breakdown of the Relationship
Sadly, since the “Stub-Tidies” were manufactured, KBT has made the decision to end its relationship with JTI, citing pressure from its local authority partners. This has directly reduced KBT’s ability to access resources from corporate partners, which means quite simply that fewer resources are available to combat the problem. This places an entirely arbitrary and unnecessary limitation on KBT’s ability to achieve its objectives, and it comes at a time when government sources of revenue are already under intense pressure. This makes no sense.
This situation has arisen because of the growing spread of the Local Government Declaration on Tobacco Control, a copy of which is included in Appendix B.
Local Government Declaration
Impact of the Local Government Declaration on Tobacco Control
The Declaration appears, in part, to be based on loosely on Article 5.3 of the FCTC, and seems to be an attempt by the Department of Health and others to bring local authorities into line with the Government’s obligations under the FCTC, but for a couple of reasons this is a misinterpretation:
- Article 5.3 does not call for the exclusion of the tobacco industry from all areas of Government work, instead it says only that, “in setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, Parties [to the Convention] shall act to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law.”[2] (emphasis added)
- Indeed, even the non-binding guidance associated with the Convention says only that, “the tobacco industry should not be a partner in any initiative linked to setting or implementing public health policies…”[3] (emphasis added)
The Declaration appears to go beyond the terms of Article 5.3 in asking that local authorities commit themselves to “protect [their] tobacco control work from the commercial and vested interests of the tobacco industry by not accepting any partnerships, payments, gifts and services, monetary or in kind or research funding offered by the tobacco industry to officials or employees”[4] (emphasis added).
Article 5.3 of FCTC is clearly not intended to restrict the Government from working with tobacco manufacturers in areas unrelated to public health policy, such as tackling litter. Similarly, as such work is unrelated to tobacco control, local authorities should not be discouraged by the Declaration from working with JTI in this area.
However, intense lobbying by anti-tobacco groups has spread a cynical misinterpretation of the Declaration amongst some local authorities. The intention of these groups appears to be to use the Declaration to exclude tobacco manufacturers altogether. In fact, the Declaration is also being used in an attempt to exclude the tobacco industry from the fight against the dangerous and illegal trade in smuggled and counterfeit tobacco. JTI can, and should, be part of the solution in relation to tackling tobacco litter.
Policy Options
International Experience
Appendix A shows brief examples of anti-litter initiatives undertaken by JTI in other global markets, specifically in Italy and the Netherlands. In both cases government support has been crucial to the success of the project.
Recently, the Government of the Netherlands has answered questions from Members of Parliament about the “Don’t leave your butts alone!” campaign. MPs Fokke and Rebel challenged the role that the Government has played in the campaign by asking the State Secretary of Health, Welfare and Sport, Dr Martin van Rijn, whether or not he agreed that the partnership was a violation of the FCTC.
Dr van Rijn responded in a letter dated 2 September that, since the partnership is not related to tobacco control or public health policy, and is instead about the cleanliness of beaches, there is no reason to believe that it is in conflict with the Government’s commitments under the FCTC.
Clarification of the Local Government Declaration on Tobacco Control
It is clear that tobacco manufacturers, alongside government, smokers and the wider public, have a role to play in tackling the problem of smoking-related litter. But, as things stand, the Local Government Declaration on Tobacco Control is acting to exclude the industry from playing its legitimate part in solving the problem.
JTI believes that the Committee should work with the Department of Communities and Local Government, and the Department of Health, to issue clarification to local authorities, of the kind issued by the State Secretary of Health, Welfare and Sport in the Netherlands, that the Local Government Declaration on Tobacco Control is not intended to prevent partnership working with the tobacco manufacturers in areas that are outside of public health, such as litter and illegal trade in smuggled and counterfeit tobacco.
Cooperative Working between Government, Business and the Third Sector
The long-term solution to the issue of litter is to establish a long-term behavioural change in society, and JTI’s experience of combatting litter in other countries shows that that can only be achieved if government, businesses, smokers and the wider public are prepared to work together.
The Government should abandon its incorrect interpretation of the WHO’s FCTC. Without Government support, the “Love Where You Live” campaign was destined to fail.
The Government, including local authorities, should welcome that JTI is eager to play a key role in tackling smoking-related litter and should return to the table to play a role in developing a long-term anti-litter strategy which brings together all sections of society and aims to deliver long-term behaviour change.
Appendix A: International Case Studies
JTI and Marevivo
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Since 2009, as a part of its commitment to reducing smoking-related litter, JTI Italy has worked together with Marevivo, an Italian marine conservation charity, the Ministero dell’Ambiente (Ministry of Environment), and the Sindacato Italiano Balneari (Italian Union of Beach Resorts) to give educate smokers and provide infrastructure for the safe disposal of their litter on Italian beaches.
The campaign is called “Ma il mare non vale una cicca?” (Isn’t the sea worth anything?). Marevivo volunteers give out leaflets and reusable “Stub-Tidy” portable ashtrays to 100,000 visitors every summer.
JTI and the Clean Netherlands Foundation
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JTI Netherlands worked together with the Stichting Nederland Schoon (Clean Netherlands Foundation) to create an innovative and thought-provoking awareness and infrastructure project to reduce smoking-related litter.
The campaign is called “Laat je peuk niet alleen!” (Don’t leave your butts alone!) and uses the call-to-action “Verzamel ze in de asbak!” (Collect them in the ashtray!). The visual identity is deliberately light-hearted and non-confrontational.
The messaging is linked across online and physical domains, using a purpose built website (http://laatjepeuknietalleen.nl/), social-media including Facebook and Twitter, and posters, leaflets, bar mats and both fixed and portable ashtrays.
Appendix B: Declaration
Local Government Declaration on Tobacco Control
October 2014