Each year Greif holds its internal sustainability awards open to all teams across the company. The Michael J. Gasser Sustainability Awards recognize and reward those teams that have demonstrated superior efforts and achievement in furthering Greif’s sustainability goals in environmental and social focus areas.
Winners of the Global Environmental Sustainability Award category this year went to Greif’s Paper and Packaging Services (PPS) division in North America for its Circular Solutions Project and Greif’s Global Industrial Packaging (GIP) business in Brazil for its EcoEx Packaging Recyclability Project.
The Circular Solutions Project from Greif North America PPS involved the development of 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.
The EcoEx Packaging Recyclability Project from the Greif LATAM Brazil GIP team was developed in response to customers‘ needs for recyclable packaging with superior barrier performance. An innovative, multi-barrier technology, 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 Greif’s circular economy strategy and, being less expensive to recycle, creates value for customers in the agrochemical and food packaging sectors.
Greif’s Michael J. Gasser Global Sustainability Awards were launched in 2010 to encourage all Greif colleagues to consider the sustainability of their decisions at work. Each year, they go from strength to strength, identifying Greif colleagues‘ environmentally-focused activities and continued commitment to creating sustainable value across the supply chain.
