Water stewardship

Globally, the 2019 assessment revealed that 57 percent of all tobacco-growing areas show a “medium to high,” “high,” or “extremely high” level of physical risk. This means those regions are at risk of water scarcity, flooding, and/or water pollution. This assessment is not tailored specifically to the tobacco-growing areas; rather, it’s based on geographic regions, so the risk factors are indicative of a more complex scenario beyond tobacco cultivation alone. With this caveat in mind, the main concern is centered on some areas of South Africa, which face extremely high overall physical water risk. Almost all other growing areas in Africa also face a risk of seasonal variability and flooding. Our 2019 assessment also showed that tobacco-growing areas in Indonesia, India, and Turkey have a significant level of risk overall. 

Modeling water risk over a 20-year span for the areas from which we source tobacco, we project that water stress will increase to some extent. Further, our scenario analysis suggests the water supply may decrease in close to half of our tobacco-growing areas by 2040, with some increases in seasonal variability of the water supply.

Data analyzed during our global water risk assessment also provided insights into communities’ access to water, sanitation, and hygiene. It showed that countries in Africa have the greatest WASH-related risks. In addition, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, Colombia, and Brazil show high risks, particularly in terms of lack of access to appropriate sanitation in rural areas. 

Local water risk assessments complement the global exercise with locally available data sources, existing supplier knowledge of risks, and local insights into relevant contextual factors. Those local assessments also take into account the monitoring information collected by the field technicians. 

The findings from our risk assessments help identify areas where we can have the greatest impact in addressing local issues. They inform our strategy and guide our interventions on the ground, which we deliver in partnership with our suppliers and farmers so as to manage this scarce resource efficiently. In 2019, our main actions focused primarily on evaluating improvements in irrigation systems brought about by switching to water-saving technologies, measuring the benefits of using sound methodologies, and employing sensor monitoring where possible. Countries of focus were Indonesia, for clove cultivation, as well as the Philippines and Spain for tobacco. Since 2018, we conducted 15 local water-risk assessments.

Irrigation in agriculture

Half of the water used to grow the tobacco we source comes from rainfall, while the other half comes from irrigation. In 2019, irrigation represented an average of 317 cubic meters of water per ton of tobacco produced. 

The quantity, quality, and timing of water availability through rainfall and irrigation all have an impact on the growth of the tobacco plant. In light of the various risk profiles around the world, irrigation is at the core of water stewardship in agriculture. We source tobacco in rain-fed areas where the rain season matches with the growing season, and, where we use irrigation, we seek to conduct local risk assessments to evaluate the risk of baseline water stress.

Irrigation systems leverage different technologies depending on the local contexts, needs, and resource availability. Tropical countries widely use open-air channel irrigation, while in the Veneto region in Italy, for instance, highly efficient drip-irrigation systems are used to grow about 98 percent of the tobacco we purchase there. Precision irrigation through cutting-edge technology helps us to reduce water use.

Farmers who diversify also must understand the water demands of alternative crops. We work with them to analyze crop-specific water use and to facilitate the transition to new crops by maximizing the efficiency of the system while monitoring the environmental impact. 

Water quality

A risk of pollution results from the potential misuse of crop protection agents (CPAs) and fertilizers. While fertilizers improve crop growth and CPAs protect crops, these chemicals can enter groundwater or watercourses, impacting aquatic ecosystems.

We have a global integrated pest management (IPM) program in place to reduce the use of unnecessary pesticides, promote the use of less hazardous alternatives, and manage them appropriately. Field technicians are key to achieving our goals. Their interventions generate improvements in pesticide and fertilizer management as part of our GAP program. In 2019, they continued to run trainings to help farmers avoid negative environmental impacts and unnecessary financial burdens. For more information, refer to our biodiversity section.

Access to water, sanitation, and hygiene

In the rural areas of emerging countries from which we source tobacco, particularly where there is no water infrastructure around the tobacco fields, we focus on improving community access to water, sanitation, and hygiene. WASH is a basic human right, and we consider it our responsibility to help secure it. 

We design the monitoring approach to measure our progress against the following criteria:

• Water – Access to drinking water from a source protected from outside contamination, such as a public tap or an improved borehole, with no more than a 30-minute collection time for a round trip from home.
• Sanitation – Access to improved sanitation facilities, such as septic tanks or composting toilets, that are not shared with other households. Such facilities can be shared when at work, provided enough are accessible. 
• Hygiene – The availability of handwashing facilities at home and work, including soap and water.

An example of a community water initiative we have undertaken is a pilot project carried out in Malawi (read more here). 

Water stewardship in manufacturing

Manufacturing cigarettes and smoke-free-product consumables at PMI accounts for 6 percent of our total water footprint, amounting to around 4 million cubic meters in 2019. Three main goals drive water management within our factories: First, we must maintain water quality and safety; second, we must reduce consumption; and third, we must rapidly deploy cost-effective water and wastewater technologies. 

Water efficiency in manufacturing

Most of our factory water is sourced from municipalities and groundwater and is used to increase tobacco moisture content, as well as for cleaning and cooling. We use the WRI Aqueduct tool to identify factories located in geographies facing water stress and account for the water withdrawn from these sites. Based on this assessment, 54 percent of our direct factory water withdrawals in 2019 were from water-stressed areas, which is higher than in 2018, when 30 percent were from water-stressed areas. The increase is due to the higher production volume of our smoke-free products, which require around five times more water than our conventional cigarettes that are based on water scarcity areas. These assessments allow us to identify the priority factories at which we will implement water-efficiency interventions. 

By 2025, PMI aspires for its smoke-free products to account for at least 30 percent of total shipment volume, which will have an impact on water use. As of 2019, a total of eight PMI factories were partially or fully converted to produce smoke-free products. These higher water needs increase risk, particularly in water-stressed regions. To mitigate these and any other water-related risks, we are implementing the AWS standard in all our factories.