Ball

Our Approach

Creating Long-Term Shared Value

At Ball Corporation, we believe in our people, our culture and our ability to deliver value to our stakeholders. Like uncompromising integrity and customer focus, being sustainable is part of our Drive for 10 vision, which leverages Ball’s strengths to achieve continued long-term success.

Our triple bottom-line approach to sustainability has evolved since it was formalized in 2006 and, today, is supported by several global policies, position statements, and tools for performance monitoring, continuous improvement and best-practice sharing. We also have embedded sustainability into our strategic planning and build sustainability goals from the bottom up. Individual plants are ultimately accountable for their sustainability performance, which is tied to each plant manager’s performance appraisal. We strive to put the right people, processes and partners in place to help us create long-term shared value and achieve our sustainability vision.


 

Sustainable Development Goals

In 2015, governments around the world officially adopted the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—global goals to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all by 2030. Ball is committed to helping make the SDGs a reality. Ball's sustainability priorities and associated goals are aligned with and contribute to 12 of the 17 SDGs. Our main contribution will derive from our operations and our value chain. Ball will focus on shared value creation—through jobs, investments and economic growth, environmental protection, research and development, and the high sustainability standards to which we hold ourselves and our suppliers accountable.

When working toward the global goals, our employees and their community engagement are valuable resources. This is why Ball joined IMPACT 2030, the only business-led effort designed to harness the power of corporate volunteers to address the SDGs, in 2015. IMPACT 2030 believes that a commitment to corporate volunteering—when used in concert with the UN, peer companies, government, academia and civil society—is a powerful tool to accelerate the use of sustainable development principles and inspire the private sector to take positive action.

Sustainability at Ball

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    Sustainability at Ball
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    Ball’s Sustainability Priorities
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External Perspective

“Ball Corporation has a cross-functional sustainability initiative in which business executives, geographic leads and plant operators drive towards a set of company-wide sustainability goals. We believe that Ball Corporation and its sustainability initiative has significant positive Sustainability Optionality driven by environmentally conscious consumers' preference for highly recyclable aluminum containers over more harmful single-use plastic.  This developing environmental theme strengthens the company’s durable competitive advantage, growth prospects and long-term margin outlook.”​

- Thomas Kamei, Executive Director Counter Point Global, Morgan Stanley Investment Management

To view the full statement click here.

Engaging Employees

We use various tools to inform Ball’s 18,300 employees about our sustainability efforts, explain our company’s sustainability goals, highlight improvements, share best practices and generate new ideas. For example, the annual Hoover Sustainability Award, named after our former chief executive officer, considers the annual sustainability performance improvements of each Ball plant in eight categories. Alongside six operational sustainability metrics, aspects such as promoting local packaging recycling initiatives and the team player behavior are also assessed. The most successful plant per division receives the award. This competition further increases our plants’ engagement in measuring, understanding and improving their sustainability performance.
 
And the Hoover Sustainability Award goes to: San Luis Potosí
 
This year’ award for Aerosol Packaging went to the Ball plant in San Luis Potosí, Mexico. In addition to achieving the highest electricity efficiency company-wide in 2018, the San Luis Potosí facility accomplished another 5% reduction in 2019. From a safety perspective, it had zero total recordable incidents for the year. All the improvement programs were focused not only on the technical skills that personnel need on their jobs but on increased awareness of sustainability, the importance of teamwork, and safety and quality in daily activities. Moreover, the plant launched a campaign to educate the public about aluminum’s sustainability credentials and to increase recycling rates.
 
According to Antonio Garcia, general manager for Aerosol Mexico, there are two secrets to their admirable results: creating a working culture focused on sustainability, and ensuring that every employee is aware of his/her impact. “While safety and the optimization of manufacturing processes both play key roles, employee engagement is definitely the variable that made the difference.” he says.
 
“Motivating people, bringing them all on board and engaging them to be the part of the plant’s objectives was the primary focus of our management team.” says Antonio. 

Though there is a long list of actions that contributed to this achievement, Antonio particularly highlights the collaborative culture between everyone, from top management down to middle managers, supervisors, staff and hourly workers. “This award is a recognition of all their efforts.” he says. “Congratulations to the team for this yet another pillar of success!”
San Luis Potosí Plant Employees

Contact Ball

For more information

E: sustainability@ball.com