British American Tobacco(BAT) has different Corporate Social initiatives (CSI) such as providing companies with guidance on selecting, managing and evaluating major activities and asking them to calculate their contributions using the London Benchmarking Group (LBG) model.
This includes cash contributions, in-kind donations and employee volunteering in company time. Over the last five years, British American Tobacco(BAT) companies have invested around £60 million in CSI projects (£8.3 million in 2016).
Nearly 80% of the total Group CSI spend is focused in the strategic markets, with a further 16% on global projects
BAT does not own tobacco farms or directly employ farmers – but their approach is to agriculture and working with farmers that have strong influence.This also means buying more than 400,000 tonnes of tobacco each year from a small number of first-tier suppliers located in approximately 35 countries, which include poor countries such as Zimbabwe, India and China.
- BAT-owned companies, which directly contract and support over 90,000 farmers;
- Third-party suppliers, which contract approximately 26
Being aware that slavery in the world is still rife today as an international company BAT takes a zero tolerance approach to all its forms. This encompasses slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour and human trafficking, which affects some of the world’s most vulnerable individuals and groups, often through exploitation by criminal gangs.To fight this BAT has adopted and implemented the modern slavery act by the following actions:
- Policy: human rights policy commitments for operations and suppliers
- Due Diligence: take steps take to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for addressing human rights business impacts
- Remedy: the steps taken to remedy any adverse human rights impacts identified.
