Berry Global Group Inc. was able to reach two key greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets two years ahead of schedule by increasing its use of renewable energy, the company said in a new sustainability report.
The Evansville, Ind.-based plastics packaging and processing company reached its short-term goal of reducing both Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions by 25 percent in 2023 compared with a 2019 baseline.
Scope 1 represents direct GHG emissions from company operations and Scope 2 represents emissions from energy use. There also are Scope 3 emissions, which are essentially all other GHG emissions that are indirectly related to a company, such as emissions associated with a supplier.
Berry has committed to net zero emissions by 2050, and in the interim cut Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 25.6 percent in 2023 compared with 2019.
"A driving force behind our emissions reduction progress, we increase the use of renewable electricity across our business by 65 percent vs. our 2019 baseline," said Vice President of Sustainability Robert Flores in an introduction to the sustainability report. This includes converting all operations in Mexico to wind and solar power.
Berry also made what Flores called "significant progress toward a circular economy by expanding our rigid and flexible recycling capabilities." This included the opening of the company's CleanStream polypropylene recycling facility in Leamington Spa, United Kingdom.
"Beyond our vertically integrated recycling operations, we continued to partner with our customers to deliver innovative, circular products. This resulted in a 4 percent increase in our post-consumer recycled resin purchases from 2022. We also increased our overall circular resin purchases 9.7 percent, including post-consumer recycled resin, post-industrial recycled resin and bioplastics," Flores said in the report.
Berry calls itself one of the world's largest plastic recyclers, with the capacity to process 350 million pounds of post-consumer and post-industrial plastics per year in 2023. That's up from 300 million pounds for 2022 and 220 million pounds in 2020.
Berry also reported that 86 percent of the company's fast-moving consumer goods packaging made in 2023 was reusable, recyclable or compostable. That's up from 83 percent in 2022, and the company has a goal to reach 100 percent by 2025. The dominant category, by far, is recyclable as Berry reported less than 1 percent of the company's products for both the reusable or compostable categories.
Berry processed a total of 4 million metric tons of resin in 2023, down from 4.2 million metric tons in 2022. That's about 8.82 billion pounds last year and 9.26 billion pounds in 2022.