Internal Awards
Recognizing 2023 Commitments to Build to Last Strategy
Annually, Greif recognizes its colleagues for their performance and commitment to our Build to Last strategy. Each award represents teams who went above and beyond to Deliver Legendary Service, Protect Our Future, and Create Thriving Communities.
2023 Dempsey Award for Customer Service Excellence Winners
Winners of the Dempsey Award are recognized for their commitment to providing best-in-class customer service as measured by their Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) scores, Net Promoter Scores (NPS). We are happy to congratulate our Saudi Arabia Jubail Plant, Manaus Brazil Facility, GPA, Massillon Mill, and Internal Audit teams as award recipients as well as our Kernersville Adhesive facility team for their second Dempsey Award.
2023 Michael J. Gasser Global Sustainability Award Winners
- PPS Riverville Facility collaborated with regulatory bodies on permit improvement, enabling the mill to repurpose rejects as fuel, resulting in a 10% reduction in landfill waste compared to the baseline and an estimated cost savings of $120K.
- CorrChoice implemented energy efficiency initiatives, resulting in nearly $500K in savings and reductions of 3% in electricity use and 13% in natural gas consumption. The initiatives also represent a fully scalable and replicable approach applicable across global facilities.
2023 Watson Award for Servant Leadership Winners
The Watson Award for Servant Leadership honors Greif’s former President and CEO, Pete Watson and recognizes teams for their actions in serving the needs of others first. This year, six teams were recognized for their exceptional commitment, achieving the highest scores (Grand Mean scores of 5.0) on the 2023 Colleague Engagement survey.
Past Dempsey Award for Customer Service Excellence Winners
2022 Dempsey Award for Customer Service Excellence
Greif’s 2022 Dempsey Award for Customer Service Excellence was awarded to seven teams across our operations for their work delivering best-in-class customer services as measured by our Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) scores and Net Promoter Scores (NPS). From our GIP business unit, we congratulate our teams from Algeria, Egypt, Sweden and the Shanghai LSD plant. Additionally, from PPS, we commend the CorrChoice Concord team and the Recovered Fiber Group in Tallahassee. We congratulate our Global Finance, Data and Analytics Center of Excellence.
Past Michael J. Gasser Global Sustainability Award Winners
Greif has been awarding the Michael J. Gasser Global Sustainability Award since 2010.
2022 Michael J. Gasser Global Sustainability Award Winners
GIP LATAM Region: The GIP LATAM Region completed five impactful projects in 2022 that demonstrate the integration of sustainability into their business success.
- LATAM Tigre completed a project to evaluate all Latin American plants to implement a 6% reduction in energy consumption per unit produced compared to the fiscal year 2019 by 2025. The project identified 447 energy focus areas and are now focused on implementing 70 LATAM strategic energy projects.
- LATAM Brazil reduced carbon emissions and raw material usage by producing plastic bags with the composition of 10% PCR. The use of PCR does not impact the performance of the plastic bags.
- GIP LATAM Brazil’s weight reduction innovation project was created to reduce the thickness of steel drums without affecting the mechanical performance. As a result, the team developed a high-performing, lighter steel packaging that reduce CO2 emission by up to 12%.
- GIP LATAM Brazil also completed a project that eliminates the need for stretch film without affecting the drum palletizing performance. The Drumclip is used to hold and secure drums to pallets to safely transport our products in place stretch film.
- GIP LATAM Columbia developed a 20L jerrycan composed of 100% PCR resin. This is the first 100% PCR packaging product that meets the quality and performance needs of the lubricants and sanitizing market.
PPS Recovered Fiber Group and the Austell Mill: The team identified multiple additional industries that can make use of mill byproducts through high-value and reuse applications that support our circularity strategy. The project reduces our emissions footprint, the amount of waste we send to landfill and landfill disposal costs.
PPS Industrial Products Group: As part of our circularity strategy, our Kernersville Adhesive facility returns its used IBCs for cleaning and re-use. One of the primary adhesives coagulates with other adhesives when sent to the city sewer due to its pH level. To ensure city sewer lines are not plugged, the facility cannot drain into sewer lines when cleaning these IBCs. Instead, the plant sent the adhesive waste and wash water to a landfill for safe disposal. In 2022, the team began a more efficient cleaning process, recycling and reusing the adhesive and washing water internally. It also established a system to neutralize pH so the IBC can recycle its metal and plastic using the standard end-of-life process.
2021 Global Environmental Sustainability Award Winners
North America Paper Packaging & Services (PPS) Circular Solutions Project: The PPS team developed a 100 percent recycled beverage carrier board, EnviroBev, for packaging bottles and cans that replaces virgin paperboard and an aqueous coating for the inner ply of EasyPour® Concrete Forming Tubes made by Industrial Products Group which eliminates the polyethylene (PE) extrusion and allows the tubes to be recycled. Recycled materials and aqueous coating technologies were combined to deliver new products for single-use food packaging items like cups, plates, and bowls, making the packaging more readily composted or recycled. Combined, these three innovations will replace 14,000 tons of virgin-based material with recycled material, providing customers with improved end-of-life solutions and advancing Greif’s circular economy strategy.
Greif LATAM Brazil Global Industrial Packaging (GIP): In response to our customers’ needs for recyclable packaging with superior barrier performance, the team developed an innovative, multi-barrier technology, EcoEx. EcoEx is fully recyclable and replaces the COEX multilayer plastic packaging, which can only be used in low-performance applications after it is reground. EcoEx technology enables the production of an innovative, multilayer jerrycan that can be recycled through regrinding processes to produce high-performing, UN-certified jerrycans and bottles. The recyclability of multi-barrier products supports our circular economy strategy and, being less expensive to recycle, creates value for customers in the agrochemical and food packaging sectors.
2020 Global Environmental Sustainability Award Winners
Argentina Rigid Industrial Packaging & Services (RIPS): The colleagues at the Tigre plant applied an innovative and sustainable mindset to develop a more environmentally friendly light-weight geometric design plastic drum. The project solved a customer need; can potentially be scaled elsewhere in our portfolio; will generate cost savings from reduced raw material usage; and reduces CO2 emissions and energy use.
Dalton (PPS) Recycling Group: The colleagues at the Dalton facility initiated a project with existing customers to educate them on the benefits of reducing waste to landfill and evolving recycling economics. The project involved creating a closed loop with two PPS customers to collect and recycle their waste and turn this waste into new products within the PPS network to sell back to the same customers. The project developed stronger customer partnerships; improved financial results; enhanced PPS’ continuity of fiber supply; and will divert more than 40,000 tons of customer waste from landfills.
2019 – RIPS and Tri-Sure Businesses
Greif’s Tri-Sure facility in Carol Stream collaborated with RIPS North America purchasing, RIPS Italy and four RIPS NA plants to source 800,000 pounds of recycled plastic resins to use in the production of IBC rear/corner feet and corner protectors. This internal sourcing strategy reduced costs by $100,000. The team also reused empty corrugated bulk boxes to ship the recycled products they manufacture, reducing corrugated bulk box purchases by 84 percent. The project created company value and established environmental and financial benefits, while closing two internal loop systems and contributing to our circular economy by diverting waste from landfills and finding a new purpose for them. Due to the outstanding sustainability impact of the project and its ability to be scaled to other molding and injection molding facilities, the project and Tri-Sure Carol Stream team was awarded the 2019 Michael J. Gasser Sustainability Award.
Past Watson Award for Servant Leadership Winners
2022 Watson Award for Servant Leadership
In its inaugural year, Greif recognized three managers and their team members for their principled actions in serving the needs of others first as measured by achieving the highest marks on the annual Colleague Engagement survey. This recognition award honors Greif’s former President and CEO, Pete Watson. The award winners all achieved a Grand Mean of 5 on the 2022 Colleague Engagement Survey.
