Internal Perspective
“The combination of Ball and Rexam provides tremendous opportunities for our evolving organization – particularly from a sustainability perspective. We can learn a lot from each other by benchmarking, as well as identifying and applying best practices and new technologies. When you double the size of your organization through an acquisition, one of the challenges is to ensure the right people connect with each other. Since starting the integration process in 2015, we spent significant time designing the best possible global beverage organization. We believe this foundation will help Ball achieve the economic, environmental and social goals we set as we begin the next chapter in our history. At the end of the day, Ball must be more viable and provide the most effective and sustainable packaging solutions to our customers – whether for global brands or our local craft beer customers. Our evolving organization can help them achieve their own business and sustainability targets.
Since I joined Ball in early 2015, I learned a lot about how Ball evolved. One aspect I noticed right away is that everybody at Ball is really passionate about beverage cans. And our team is also passionate about manufacturing every can with the least amount of resources. As the biggest beverage can maker in the world, we are in an excellent spot to further position cans as the most sustainable packaging choice. We are excited about the many opportunities ahead.”
- Erik Bouts, Senior Vice President, Ball Corporation; COO, Global Beverage Packaging
And the Hoover Sustainability Award goes to: Vietnam
Engaging our workforce is key to achieving exceptional results. In 2010, Ball established the Hoover Sustainability Award in honor of the company’s former chairman, president and CEO, who was a key driver in developing Ball’s formal sustainability program. Each plant’s sustainability performance is evaluated annually across nine categories, including our Big 6 operational priorities, local support of packaging collection and recycling, charitable contributions and volunteerism, and its ‘One Ball’ team player spirit. In each division, the plant with the greatest year-over-year improvement receives the award.
In 2015, our joint venture plant in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, won the award in Beverage Packaging Asia Pacific. Since the plant joined the Ball family in 2012, employees have put a strong emphasis on operating the facility in a highly sustainable way. They embraced Ball’s sustainability approach, quickly started monitoring their sustainability metrics and implemented various best practices from other Ball plants to lessen their environmental impact and strengthen their positive social impacts.
While the plant exhibited strong results in all nine award categories, their year-over-year operational eco-efficiency gains were outstanding. In particular, the plant achieved double-digit improvements on natural gas and water efficiency, as well as decreased total waste generation. At the same time, the total recordable incident rate (TRIR) was reduced by 54 percent, leading to a better performance than the corporate average TRIR.
