Ball awards plants for greatest sustainability impact

BALL Corporation will be awarding the R. David Hoover Sustainability Award to seven of its 58 global manufacturing plants.

The annual award recognizes plants that have made a substantial impact toward Ball's sustainability goals in 2014, both inside the plant and within their respective communities. Established 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, the R. David Hoover Sustainability Award lauds one plant in each region of the company’s global beverage can and global food and household products businesses for best overall sustainability improvement and greatest impact in the local community.

Ball evaluates the performance of each of its plants around the world in various categories. The plants are assessed in the area of reduction of electricity, natural gas, water usage, waste and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The categories also include overall safety record, sharing of best practices, local support of packaging collection and recycling, and charitable contributions and volunteerism.

The company’s most sustainable plants of 2014 for the Global Metal Beverage Packaging are Beverage Cans of Wallkill, New York; Ball Packaging Europe of Belgrade, Serbia; Ball Asia Pacific of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and Latapack-Ball of Alagoinhas, Brazil.

Beverage Cans is being recognized for succeeding in reducing its total recordable incident rate by 66%, while Ball Packaging achieved a 6% cut in total waste to landfill. Ball Asia Pacific improved its natural gas efficiency by 20%, and Latapack-Ball lowered the total amount of waste generated per unit of production by 5%. 

For Global Metal Food and Household Products Packaging, Metal Food and Household Products of Baltimore, Maryland; Global Impact Extruded Aluminum Packaging of Bellegarde, France; and Global Slugs of Beaurepaire, also in France will be recognized for their operational achievements last year.

Metal Food and Household Products has improved its electricity efficiency by 15%. France’s Global Impact Extruded Aluminum Packaging and Global Slugs achieved more than 18% water efficiency and 11% natural gas efficiency, respectively.

Ball's sustainability management, performance, and goals are regularly reviewed by third parties. The company ranked third among the 500 largest U.S. companies on overall environmental performance by Newsweek. It has been included in Dow Jones' World and North America Sustainability Indices for the second consecutive year, and was listed in the international FTSE4Good index for five consecutive years. It was also included in the MSCI Global Sustainability Indexes, the STOXX Global ESG Leader Indices, and the Euronext Vigeo US 50 index. It was recognized as an industry leader in the Containers and Packaging category.