Corporate responsibility
Elimination of Child Labour
STG does not employ child labour, neither do our suppliers.
Child labour does exist, however, in the agricultural sector in some of the third world countries from which we import tobacco.
Child labour is rooted in poverty, and the children contribute to feed the families which often need every hand they can get in that difficult task. The long-term way out of poverty for the families as well as the countries in question goes through education.
Obviously, children can help in the families, but their tasks shall not prevent them from going to school and leading their lives as children. And certainly children should never carry out heavy work or work that involve a health risk.
STG’s efforts against child labour are today carried out through the foundation Eliminating Child Labour in Tobacco Growing, “ECLT”, and through our regular contacts with our suppliers.
ECLT is a unique cooperation between the international union of tobacco workers, the international tobacco growers’ association, the large tobacco suppliers and the tobacco industry, including Scandinavian Tobacco Group. The foundation is supported by the international labour organisation of the United Nations, ILO.
Through a number of initiatives and activities ECLT supports education for children as well as general information in the local societies which can help improve the general standard of living and work conditions - all with the purpose of limiting and ultimately eliminating child labour in the tobacco fields.
At the moment ECLT is engaged in a collaborative effort with local NGOs and civil society in projects in several countries, including Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Kyrgyzstan.
Further information on ECLT can be found at the foundation’s website www.eclt.org.
Environment, Health and Safety
Scandinavian Tobacco Group has focus on work environment and safety on all its locations, and our production facilities have particular focus also on the environmental impact of our activities.
For the tobacco-producing companies we have a well-established and thoroughly tested program in the area of environment and safety. We use the program to ensure that we comply with all applicable laws and regulations as well as our own stricter rules.
The program also has as its purpose to create and maintain a safer and better work environment, diminish our environmental foot print, and create efficient processes to limit waste and emissions.
We measure the performance of our production facilities against the key performance indicators which form part of the program. This allows us to measure and compare the development year by year.
The systematic performance measurements under our Environment, Health and Safety program were put on hold in 2009 due to a major restructuring of our supply chain involving the establishment of a new cigar factory in Lummen in Belgium and , at the same time, the closing-down of factories in Denmark and Belgium.
However, we maintain our strong focus on the impact of our business on the environment and on the health and safety of our employees, and the systematic approach contained in the program will be resumed in 2010.