Fabrication circulaire
Committed to a circular economy that diverts used packaging and operational waste from landfills, preserves resources, and reduces the use of virgin materials through downgauging and by increasing recycled content, further reducing our products’ impact on the environment.
Points forts
- At Greif, we have been incorporating recycled materials into our products for decades. Our Build to Last strategy demonstrates our commitment to being industry leaders in circularity.
- Advancing our product sustainability initiatives was a leading focus in 2024, particularly by creating opportunities to use post-consumer resin (PCR) and improving the recyclability of our plastic containers. Our innovative barrier coating technologies for plastic containers prevent the loss of our customers’ products while protecting the container from contamination.
- We create value for our customers by offering a broad suite of solutions that help them meet their sustainability goals.
- We continue to monitor the evolving regulatory landscape and are preparing to align our sustainability targets with new regulations as they emerge, including the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR and Waste Framework Directive).
- In 2025, we expect to refine our sustainability targets based on an updated baseline, where circular manufacturing will play a key role in achieving our goals.
Pourquoi la fabrication circulaire est importante
Our Build to Last strategy and business model are rooted in circular economy principles. With our extensive expertise, legendary customer service, global reach, and diverse portfolio of solutions, we are uniquely positioned to deliver innovative, sustainable, and circular products and services. Circular manufacturing is central to our efforts to meet our customers’ needs today while preparing for the future as they navigate regulatory changes, shifting consumer trends, and ambitious sustainability goals. Advancing the circular economy is essential for our business growth, colleague engagement, talent attraction, and environmental impact.
Collaboration across value chains is critical to driving a circular economy. We strive to maximize waste diversion, material recovery, and value creation for our suppliers and customers. By promoting recycled content, collecting end-of-life containers, and forming strategic partnerships, we deliver sustainable solutions that drive mutual success. Reconditioning, recycling, and increasing recycled content throughout the product life cycle reduce resource consumption, minimize waste, and lower carbon emissions.
Our Approach
Our circular economy strategy emphasizes a cradle-to-cradle approach, advancing five key circular economy principles:
- Réduction de l’utilisation de matières premières vierges.
- Réduction des déchets et minimisation de l’utilisation des ressources naturelles.
- Innovation et augmentation de la recyclabilité et de l'utilisation de matériaux recyclés.
- Alternatives à base de fibres aux plastiques à usage unique.
- Life cycle services including the collection, reconditioning, and recycling of used products.
Advancing circularity is a shared responsibility across our business and enabling functions. For example, our supply chain team integrates circularity objectives into key procurement categories like resin and steel, while sourcing managers explore innovative projects and new supply sources. These efforts embed circular principles into daily operations and help us achieve our 2030 circularity goals.
Reducing reliance on virgin raw materials is a cornerstone of our strategy. Lightweighting, downgauging, and prioritizing recycled materials are integral to our product design process. For instance, our EcoBalance product line incorporates up to 100 percent recycled high-density polyethylene sourced from post-consumer containers. Collaboration with customers and suppliers promotes the adoption of recycled and recyclable products, thereby aligning sustainability and business success.
We detail our approach and progress towards becoming a zero waste-to-landfill organization in the Déchets section de ce rapport.
Product Portfolio
We offer packaging solutions for essential industries, including agriculture, agrochemicals, specialty chemicals, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, and more. Our solutions embrace circular economy principles:
- Sustainable Fiber Solutions: Our vertically integrated solutions through the fiber packaging value chain demonstrate a circular economy. Our paper packaging solutions include fiber drums, tubes and cores, partitions, paperboard and containerboard, and corrugated products. We also develop products that replace single-use plastics with fiber-based alternatives. In 2024, 71 percent of all fiber products manufactured were sourced from recycled materials. Our Recycled Materials Group collected 3.4 million metric tons of fiber, of which 41 percent was then processed by Greif mills to produce paperboard for our paper packaging solutions.
Greif EnviroRAP
Greif EnviroRAP is 100 percent recycled paperboard with an innovative water-based, recyclable, and repulpable poly-alternative coating.
- Durable Metal Solutions: Steel drums are a sustainable packaging solution due to their infinite recyclability. They can even be reconditioned and reused multiple times before recycling. In 2024, our Life Cycle Services (LCS) network reconditioned and sold more than 1.2 million steel drums. We manufactured new steel products with approximately 5-30 percent recycled content, depending on the region.
Greif Light Steel Drum
The Greif Light Steel Drum is a high-performance lightweight drum with a unique design that reduces the carbon footprint compared to a standard drum.
- Customized Polymer Solutions: Our polymer solutions, including plastic drums, jerrycans, and intermediate bulk containers (IBCs) are lightweight, durable, and high performing. Our plastic packaging products are fully recyclable, supported by our comprehensive suite of barrier protection alternatives. Additionally, we reconditioned more than 1 million IBCs and 322,000 plastic drums.
GCUBE IBC
Greif offers the GCUBE IBC that can be made from Post Consumer Resin (PCR) generated from the collection of empty IBCs.
Services de cycle de vie
- Steel and Plastic: Our LCS network provides access to used steel, plastic, and paper products that reduce demand for virgin raw materials. In North America and Europe, we collect and recondition used steel, plastic, and IBC packaging products, making them suitable for reuse and resale. In 2024, our LCS network collected 3.6 million containers, reconditioned or remanufactured more than 2.6 million of these containers and recycled the remaining containers.
- Fiber: Greif’s Recycled Materials Group (RMG) serves as a commercial and industrial recycling partner, recycling all forms of paper and select plastics in the U.S. In 2024, RMG collected 3.4 million metric tons of material, with 41 percent used in our paper products and 59 percent sold to external mills. 86 percent of the fiber used in our paper manufacturing at our mills is sourced from recycled materials. We are a net positive recycler and a key player in the paper recycling industry.
Navigating Regulatory Landscapes
We proactively monitor evolving regulations related to circularity and waste. In 2024, we collaborated with trade associations and industry groups to stay informed, advocate for practical sustainability measures, and share insights. As new regulatory requirements emerge, we plan to refine our sustainability targets to ensure alignment. Circular manufacturing will remain central to achieving these targets.
Goals, Progress, & Performance
Objectifs 2030 :
- Rendre 100 % des produits Greif recyclables1.
- Atteindre une moyenne de 60 % de matières premières recyclées dans nos produits2.
- Récupérer en moyenne 80 % de la quantité de matériaux que nous expédions sur le marché3.
We have made significant strides towards achieving our 2030 goals, particularly within our Sustainable Fiber Solutions segment. Approximately 99 percent of our fiber solution products are recyclable and, on average, are made from 71 percent recycled content. Additionally, our RMG group collects 246% of the volume of fiber products that we sell.
We are tagging products appropriately across various systems to monitor recycled content and material recovery accurately as we progress toward our goals. In 2025, this process includes automating data collection and management activities to drive operational efficiencies and real-time data availability.
Across our Customized Polymer Solutions segment we are focused on a thorough review of sourcing, equipment, and technical capabilities to evaluate our capacity to increase PCR usage within our products.
We are working towards building a global network of material recovery solutions to reach our 2030 goals while growing our global reconditioning network. In November 2024, we acquired a majority stake in Delta Containers Manchester in the United Kingdom to expand and enhance our Intermediate Bulk Container (IBC) reconditioning and recycling services across the UK and Ireland. In December 2024, through our subsidiary Centurion Container LLC, we acquired the operations of Enterprize Container Corporation (“Enterprize”). Enterprize is an industrial reconditioner in Tennessee, U.S. that provides reconditioned and rebottled IBCs as well as reconditioned plastic drums.
Travaillant sur un vaste portefeuille de matières premières et de produits, les objectifs de recyclabilité de Greif seront évalués en fonction du poids et consolidés au niveau de l'entreprise.
Les objectifs de contenu recyclé pour les produits Greif sont des moyennes minimales référencées sur un portefeuille de matériaux et de produits en poids, consolidées au niveau de l'entreprise.
[3] Les objectifs de récupération pour les produits Greif sont des moyennes minimales référencées sur un portefeuille de matériaux et de produits en fonction du poids, consolidées au niveau de l'entreprise.
Utilisation de plastique recyclé dans le moulage des IBC
L'usine Tri-Sure de Greif à Carol Stream a collaboré avec les achats de GIP Amérique du Nord, GIP Italie et quatre usines de GIP NA pour s'approvisionner en 800 000 livres de résines plastiques recyclées à utiliser dans la production de pieds arrière/coins et de protections d'angle pour IBC. Cette stratégie d'approvisionnement interne a permis de réduire les coûts de $100 000. L'équipe a également réutilisé des caisses en vrac en carton ondulé vides pour expédier les produits recyclés qu'elle fabrique, réduisant ainsi les achats de caisses en vrac en carton ondulé de 84 %. Le projet a créé de la valeur pour l'entreprise et a établi des avantages environnementaux et financiers, tout en fermant deux systèmes de boucle interne et en contribuant aux principes de l'économie circulaire en détournant les déchets des décharges et en leur trouvant une nouvelle utilité. En raison de l'impact exceptionnel du projet sur la durabilité et de sa capacité à être étendu à d'autres installations de moulage et de moulage par injection, le projet et l'équipe Tri-Sure Carol Stream ont reçu le prix Michael J. Gasser Sustainability Award.
Reconditionnement de tambours coniques au Portugal
For the past 20 years Greif’s RIPS facility in Iberia, Portugal has been supplying customers with reconditioned conical drums, having reconditioned over 10 million drums and saving 50,000 tons of steel, 197,600 tonnes of CO2 emissions, 2,600,000 gigajoules of energy and 343,200 cubic meters of water in the process. The project was initially started as a way to help address our customers’ wish to reduce waste and lower their carbon footprint and overall improve customer satisfaction. The team collaborated with customers to understand their needs, including volume, specification requirements and safety, developed a reconditioning process and ultimately installed a reconditioning line to begin serving customers. Today, the facility serves a multitude of customers, reconditioning 500,000 conical drums and saving 5,200 tons of steel each year.
Développer les services Cradle to Cradle grâce à des investissements et des coentreprises
In recent years, Greif has made investments and established multiple joint ventures in order to expand the scale and capabilities of the reuse, recycling, and reconditioning services we provide. After acquiring a minority stake in 2020, Greif has continued its investment in Centurion Container LLC, owning 80% of the company as of April 2023, to expand our intermediate bulk container (IBC) reconditioning network in North America. After beginning a joint venture with Delta Plastics, the leading independent supplier of reconditioned IBCs in the United Kingdom, in 2020, Greif completed full-acquisition in November of 2024. Additionally, in December of 2020, Greif acquired a minority stake in LAF s.r.l., expanding IBC reconditioning services for our Italy-based customers. We look forward to working with our partners to continue to reduce our environmental impact through cradle-to-cradle solutions.
Services de reconditionnement de pointe à Lille
L'usine LCS de Greif à Lille, en France, a pris des mesures importantes pour innover dans la logistique associée à l'offre de services de reconditionnement à nos clients. Traditionnellement, les IBC vides étaient récupérés et livrés à un seul endroit pour un seul client. LCS Lille a commencé à récupérer les IBC à des endroits tout au long de la chaîne d'approvisionnement de nos clients, puis à livrer les IBC reconditionnés à nos clients, simplifiant ainsi la logistique pour nos clients. Lille a également mis en œuvre Datamatrix, un système de traçabilité qui nous permet d'enregistrer toutes les étapes de production de la réception à la livraison, d'avoir une visibilité sur les origines d'un IBC et de fournir une vue en temps réel de notre inventaire pour soutenir un service client globalement amélioré. Datamatrix permet également une meilleure gestion des résidus dans les IBC qu'ils collectent. Chaque IBC qui entre dans l'usine est automatiquement pesé pour déterminer la quantité de résidus dans le conteneur et informer sur la manière dont il est traité. Avec Datamatrix, ces informations peuvent être renvoyées directement aux clients pour améliorer la gestion des IBC prêts à être récupérés. Lille utilise un système d'eau en boucle fermée pour l'eau utilisée pour nettoyer les IBC, recyclant 100 % de l'eau utilisée et collectant, traitant et déchiquetant le plastique utilisé pour fabriquer de nouveaux IBC et fûts en plastique.
Offrir à nos clients une solution circulaire
The CorrChoice GreenGuard® La gamme de produits CorrChoice GreenGuard® offre à nos clients une alternative recyclable et repulpable sans danger pour les aliments aux matériaux supplémentaires, tels que les doublures en plastique. Notre gamme de revêtements en papier GreenGuard® est sans danger pour le contact direct avec la plupart des types d'aliments et présente une résistance à l'huile, à la graisse, à l'eau, à l'humidité et à l'abrasion ainsi qu'une technologie innovante de remplacement de la cire. En appliquant le revêtement sur des contenants en carton ondulé, nous éliminons le besoin de matériaux supplémentaires utilisés dans de nombreuses applications alimentaires. Nous travaillons avec nos clients pour garantir que nos produits répondent à leurs besoins en matière de manipulation sûre et sécurisée des aliments tout en fournissant des produits d'emballage recyclables et repulpables 100%, faisant progresser notre stratégie d'économie circulaire tout en permettant à nos clients d'atteindre leurs objectifs de durabilité.
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