Ball Corporation has cut the carbon footprint of its most common beverage can formats throughout their life cycle by 10% since 2010, putting it on track to meet its global Cut/4 Carbon target of 25% by 2020, according to the can maker’s biennial sustainability report.
As well as the carbon milestone, Ball has achieved its greenhouse gas emission reduction target and decreased its carbon intensity by more than 10% over five years, compared to the 2010 baseline. It has reduced the total recordable incident rate by 27% through the implementation of various safety tools, and installed three 1.5mW wind turbines at its plant in Ohio.
It has also donated more than $4 million to charitable organisations through The Ball Foundation, employee donations and its corporate match scheme.
“Sustainability has always been a part of who we are, and our team has worked hard to maintain a careful balance of our economic, environmental and social impacts over the years,” said John A. Hayes, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Ball Corp. “As a larger, more global company, being sustainable is more important than ever, and we must continue to set a high bar for ourselves and our partners.”
The report details Ball’s progress towards its priorities in product stewardship, operational excellence, talent management and community ambassadorship – and sets a clear path for the future with ten new ambitious goals to be achieved by 2020.
They include achieving industry recycling rate targets for metal packaging products in developed markets, and working towards measurement and improvement of metal packaging recycling rates in emerging markets.
Ball completed its long-awaited acquisition of Rexam, after agreeing a fee of around $6.1 billion in cash and equity, earlier in the year.
Hayes continued: “As the largest canmaker in the world, we have a unique opportunity to apply key learnings from throughout our company, including many initiatives started by our incoming Rexam colleagues, to leverage our scale to be more efficient and more cost effective, and to set new standards in sustainable growth. We also have greater opportunities to address the fundamental challenges in our business and in our value network to ensure the beverage can is the most sustainable package in the beverage supply chain.
“With our 18,700 employees and our partners around the world committed to our vision and 2020 goals, we look forward to building a brighter, stronger future for our organisation and the industry.”
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