Ball Corporation (NYSE: BLL), a recognized sustainability leader in the global packaging industry, is honoring seven of its 58 global manufacturing plants with the R. David Hoover Sustainability Award for making a substantial impact toward Ball's sustainability goals, both inside the plant and within their communities, in 2014.
The annual award recognizes one plant in each region of Ball's global beverage can business and its global food and household products business for the best overall sustainability improvement, as well as greatest impact in their local community.
The most sustainable plants of 2014 and examples of their operational achievements from last year include:
Global Metal Beverage Packaging
Wallkill, New York (Beverage Cans, North America): Reduced its total recordable incident rate by 66 percent.
Belgrade, Serbia (Ball Packaging Europe): Reduced its total waste to landfill by 6 percent.
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (Ball Asia Pacific): Improved its natural gas efficiency by 20 percent.
Alagoinhas, Brazil (Latapack-Ball): Reduced the total amount of waste generated per unit of production by 5 percent.
Global Metal Food and Household Products Packaging
Baltimore, Maryland (Metal Food and Household Products): Improved its electricity efficiency by 15 percent.
Bellegarde, France (Global Impact Extruded Aluminum Packaging): Improved its water efficiency by more than 18 percent.
Beaurepaire, France (Global Slugs): Improved its natural gas efficiency by 11 percent.
"Sustainability remains at the core of maximizing value in all of Ball's businesses and our commitment to sustainability has never been stronger," said John A. Hayes, chairman, president and chief executive officer. "We continue to set aggressive goals and, thanks to disciplined execution at all levels, made significant progress toward achieving them last year. Congratulations to the 2014 Hoover Sustainability Award winning plants and our employees for their persistent dedication to our long-term sustainability vision."
Year over year, each of Ball's plants around the world is evaluated based on performance in various categories, including the reduction of electricity, natural gas, water usage, waste and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), as well as overall safety record, sharing of best practices, local support of packaging collection and recycling, charitable contributions and volunteerism.
In 2011, Ball established the R. David Hoover Sustainability Award in honor of the company's former chairman, president and CEO, who was a key driver in the development of Ball's formal sustainability program.
Ball's sustainability management, performance and goals are regularly reviewed by third parties. Recent acknowledgments include: inclusion in Dow Jones' World and North America Sustainability Indices for the second consecutive year, and recognition as industry leader in the Containers and Packaging category; ranked third among the 500 largest U.S. companies on overall environmental performance by Newsweek; listing in the international FTSE4Good index for five consecutive years; and inclusion in the MSCI Global Sustainability Indexes, the STOXX Global ESG Leader Indices and the Euronext Vigeo US 50 index.
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