Tobacco giant’s ‘carbon neutral vape’ was offset with junk credits

A flagship product marketed by British American Tobacco (BAT) as “the first global carbon neutral vape brand” achieved its green status with carbon credits that have been deemed to make no environmental difference.

In 2021, the tobacco giant bought carbon credits to counterbalance the 130,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – equivalent to the annual emissions of more than 28,000 cars – linked to the manufacture and distribution of its vape brand Vuse.

But the credits were all bought from a project subsequently shown to have no effect whatsoever on greenhouse gas emissions, according to data provided by Allied Offsets.

The project in question, a eucalyptus farm in Uruguay set up by Harvard University’s endowment fund, was in 2022 given a rating of zero by an agency that assesses the effectiveness of carbon offsetting schemes. The rating means that the credits, which should each represent one tonne of emissions avoided or removed from the atmosphere, represent no change whatsoever.

To promote Vuse’s carbon-neutral status in July 2021, BAT sailed a yacht up the Thames in a stunt that incurred another 10 tonnes of emissions – offset by credits from the same project.

BAT also went on to buy a further 47,000 credits from the project the following year. (Each credit represent one tonne of emissions avoided or removed from the atmosphere.)

“These trees [that make up the project] are not native or biodiverse and they offer little in terms of ecosystem services,” said Elias Ayrey, chief science officer at Renoster, the agency that gave the zero rating. “The plantations themselves are highly industrial and make use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers.

“We would not consider carbon neutrality claims based on these particular credits to be legitimate. We would encourage BAT to purchase credits from projects that represent real, native forest restoration or conservation in the future.”

A BAT spokesperson said the claim was independently validated in 2021 and that all Vuse communications around carbon neutrality were terminated in December 2023. At the time of writing, however, the Vuse website still carried the claim.

The BAT spokesperson added: “Our strategy now focuses on eco-design and reducing our material footprint to make progress towards our net zero goals by reducing and removing greenhouse gas emissions across our entire value chain.”

Since December 2020 the company has bought more than 500,000 credits from various offsetting projects, most of which have been evaluated by a second ratings agency called BeZero Carbon. It found that more than 390,000 of them have a “moderately low”, “low”, or “very low” likelihood of achieving the purported one tonne of emissions avoidance or removal. (The Uruguayan project was given a rating denoting “low” likelihood.)

Khaled Diab, communications director at the independent watchdog Carbon Market Watch, said: “In the case of tobacco products, carbon neutrality claims are particularly problematic given the enormous climate and ecological impact of tobacco production, consumption and waste.”

The tobacco industry has increasingly come under fire for the environmental impact of its products. Every year 360 million disposable vapes are thrown away in the UK, at a rate of 11 a second. The devices contain lithium, a material used in electric car batteries that takes huge amounts of energy and water to produce.

In 2022, the World Health Organization reported that the tobacco industry contributes to the felling of 600 million trees and the release of 84 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere annually. The industry’s carbon footprint is equivalent to one-fifth of the CO2 produced by the commercial airline industry each year.

In 2021, BAT won a sustainable product award for Vuse. That year, according to the company’s disclosures, BAT was responsible for nearly 7 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – equivalent to 1.5 million cars.

“No product should ever claim to be ‘carbon neutral’,” said Diab. “This is inaccurate, misleading and deceptive.”