Strategic initiative implementation and organizational impact

Strategic Initiative

Altria's commitment to the environment appears very weak. It pledges full and complete compliance will all applicable environmental laws and regulations, something it has to do anyway unless it wants to face the consequences (Altria, environment and agriculture). Kraft says it is developing a systematic approach to move beyond compliance and to understand issues along its supply and demand chains, but this effort began in 2000 and five years later it's still formulating plans rather than reporting results. Further, its own Environmental Performance Indicators (EPIs) show only moderate improvement from 2001 to 2003. It's interesting to note that 2004 EPIs are missing. Philip Morris International reports monitoring efforts, but offers no concrete results. Of all the environmental issues related to cigarettes, all Philip Morris USA can talk about is cigarette litter. And, even on this issue, the company makes it clear that it does not endorse any changes to legislation to help fix the problem. In summary, Altria's efforts are nebulous at best with insubstantial execution details.

2. It's difficult to imagine how Altria's "commitment" posted on its Web site will offset the environmental issues with the tobacco company. Education is not likely to prevent cigarette litter. Even if it could, this issue is only one of the many environmental implications for cigarettes that the company needs to adequately address. Moving beyond the well-known health problems associated with individuals who smoke, second hand smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, at least fifty of which can cause cancer (Tobacco: Its impact on our environment). Second hand smoke often contains pesticides, herbicides and other toxic additives used to manufacture tobacco products. The tobacco cultivation process depletes soils nutrients, requires extensive use of herbicides, pesticides and other chemicals, and contributes to air pollution, deforestation and increases in landfill. In fact, tobacco curing is the single largest commercial cause of deforestation worldwide, destroying around 8.55 million acres of forest each year. For every 300 cigarettes that are manufactured, one tree is killed. A cigarette manufacturing machine uses four miles of paper per hour. Given all these issues, Altria should be doing a lot more than just telling people they need to dispose of their cigarette buttes properly.