Sustainability

At Berry Plastics, corporate growth through acquisitions and organic growth has reaped benefits for both our customers and our employees. With 62 manufacturing facilities, globally, we have the ability and responsibility to positively influence the communities and environments in which we operate and serve. Whether it is through recycling awareness, product design, or environmental compliance, we are actively committed to fulfilling our economical, environmental and social potential.

“Sustainability isn’t something you do something about.  It’s how you do something.” (PMT, Nov./Dec. 2006).  To us, sustainability is about creating goods and services without damaging the ability of future generations to create goods and services.  It’s about being responsible stewards of our business and of our environment.  Sustainability touches every core of our business from sourcing to manufacturing to shipping.

 

What we aspire to do – Our sustainability goals

• Reduce our environmental footprint through reduction of energy consumption, VOC emissions, raw materials consumption and waste creation.

• Reuse packaging materials through their useful life.  Many of the packages that we produce are reused by the consumer (i.e. industrial buckets) and even our direct customers.  We also promote reuse of the secondary packaging components such as corrugated boxes and pallets.

• Use recycled materials in our everyday processes and promote recycling as a valuable end-of-life for plastic materials.

• Manufacture parts from bio-based raw materials that meet our performance and quality standards.

What we’ve done - Sustainability Case Studies:

 

Reduction - Lawrence Green Team: With the rising costs of waste, George “Bear” Eoannou decided to check out what we were throwing away at our Lawrence, KS plant.  Perusing the dumpster, he found scrap metal, loads of corrugated boxes and an array of other items deemed worthless.  But what Bear saw was not trash, but wasted dollars.  More than half of the items in the dumpster were not only salvageable, but profitable.  We were throwing away valuable materials and not only hurting the bottom line, but wasting precious resources.  Bear started calling local scrap yards, recyclers and area businesses and found homes for most of these items.  Now what was deemed trash was being sold to others as valuable materials creating another stream of revenue.  This was the beginning of the Lawrence Green Team.  What started as a dumpster digging exercise has turned into a full-on assault of the status quo.  The Green Team is evaluating how the Lawrence plant operates and recommending projects that will not only reduce material waste, but increase operating efficiencies.  Based on this team’s success, expect to see green teams growing at every Berry facility!

 

What we are doing - Our sustainability focus areas:

 

Post-consumer resin use – All of our packages are recyclable, and we would like nothing more than to be able to use recycled material where appropriate in our manufacturing.  We are working with customers to arrive at solutions that will provide them with the recycled content that they desire and the product performance that meets our quality standards.

 

Bio-resin applications – There are no bad materials, just bad applications.  As new resin technologies emerge, we will assess their properties. We are evaluating bio-resin materials for use in applications where they can perform to our standards.

 

Sustainable plastics – We process all type of resins at Berry, including HDPE, PP, LDPE, LLDPE, PET, and PS.  One of our sustainability focus areas is to highlight the sustainable attributes of existing plastics.

 

Renewable energy – We realize the importance of reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.  We are evaluating renewable sources of energy that will help us to reach this goal.