Strategic Integration
Strategic Priorities
Greif’s sustainability strategies support the Company’s vision of, in industrial packaging, be the best performing customer service company in the world. Our sustainability strategies also demonstrate our commitment to conducting business The Greif Way and contribute to creating shared value for our customers, stakeholders and the environment. We invite you to explore our strategic integration graphic, which highlights how Greif’s sustainability program is embedded throughout our entire business.
In 2019, we surveyed Greif’s senior leaders to better understand how Greif uses and transforms financial, manufactured, intellectual, human, social and natural capital to create value for our company. These conversations reinforced the importance of our sustainability investments in executing our business strategies.
In 2020, we conducted a gap analysis comparing our current climate management practices to the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations. It has enabled us to identify areas for improvement regarding our climate strategy. Using this information, we took actions to improve governance, conducted scenario analyses, and established our emissions target. Please visit the Climate Strategy section of our report to learn more about our TCFD gap analysis.
Invest in our people and teams to foster a strong culture of colleague engagement and accountability.
Deliver industry leading customer service excellence to achieve superior customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Strive for and realize performance excellence and value creation.
We further reinforced that our sustainability strategies are appropriately focused during our 2020 materiality assessment. The assessment validated that our material topics address both internal and external sustainability impacts, while uncovering a need to take additional steps to strengthen our management of Climate Strategy, Circular Economy—including Cradle to Cradle Manufacturing, Reconditioning, Reuse & Recycling, Innovation and Supply Chain Management—and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, which are discussed in those sections of our report. At the conclusion of the materiality assessment, we reviewed strategic plans to enhance our governance, goals, KPIs and overall management approach to these topics with our ELT, and we began implementing those plans in 2021.
In 2021, we focused our Leadership Council, our top leaders, on ESG, with specific attention to key issues including Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Waste Reduction, Energy Reduction, Environmental Compliance and Circularity and Innovation. We held workshops and collaborated in teams to strengthen our management approach of the key issues. We also incorporated ESG KPIs in our monthly Must Win Battle scorecard, CEO Enterprise Scorecard, Greif Business System (GBS) book and capital approval process to improve governance and further operationalize sustainability within our businesses. We plan to continue using the findings from our materiality assessment and TCFD gap analysis to drive our strategic plan in 2022.
Financial Capital
Greif generates financial capital through a sharp focus on customer service excellence and disciplined operational execution. These focal areas, combined with attracting and retaining a skilled workforce and continuing to innovate to meet our customers’ expectations, result in strong financial returns and profits for our stakeholders.
Human Capital
There continues to be a strong, and growing, demand for skilled labor in our organization despite advances in automation. Our investments in training and development are aimed at providing our approximately 16,000 colleagues with the skills they need to perform their jobs, serve our customers and move our company into the future. Collectively, human capital has the capability to impact our performance more so than any other form of capital.
Social Capital
As a global organization, we must maintain the trust of a large and complex group of stakeholders. Whether through collaboration with our customers, partnerships we establish with academic institutions and other NGOs, or any other interaction we have with our stakeholders, we work to instill high quality relationships by demonstrating our commitment to The Greif Way and responsible business practices. Our sustainability initiatives help us communicate these commitments and directly impact our brand, reputation and willingness for customers to do business with us.
Intellectual Capital
Innovation and new technologies have the potential to be great differentiators. Our innovation activities, thought leadership and collaboration with customers and other external stakeholders are critical elements of developing, demonstrating and leveraging our intellectual capital. Focusing on innovation and
developing our intellectual capital allows us to identify new business models and solutions that will lead to new opportunities that can positively impact Greif’s financial results. As many of our customers set long-term goals, particularly on environmental topics such as energy usage, greenhouse gas emissions and waste reduction, we are positioning ourselves, and our products, to help them meet their objectives.Manufactured Capital
Key material topics: Product Quality, Supply Chain Management, Cradle to Cradle Manufacturing, Reconditioning, Reuse & Recycling, Risk Management & Business Continuity
Greif’s global footprint is a key differentiator and critical component to how we protect and grow our business. Our investments in and maintenance of our facilities, production lines and capabilities and products we manufacture are directly tied to our ability to generate revenue. They also provide an opportunity to operate more efficiently, minimize our risk exposure and reduce our environmental impact by applying circular economy principles and executing on our strategies to reduce our footprint.
Natural Capital
Greif relies heavily on the use of natural resources in our business. Through the materials we source, manufacturing processes we implement and logistics that enable our supply chain, we have a responsibility to minimize our consumption of natural resources, and reduce our footprint, as much as possible. Over time, as natural resources become more constrained and regulations over the use of them continue to advance, these resources will become more valuable and organizations that have worked to responsibly manage and minimize use of them where possible will be better positioned to compete. Each of our sustainability strategies to reduce our footprint and advance circular economy principles is aimed at reducing our use of natural capital, engaging our customers and supply chain to do the same and establishing partnerships that will help us advance these priorities more quickly.
SUSTAINABILITY HIGHLIGHTS
~16,000
Colleagues
Our people—principled, intelligent and reliable—reaffirm our reputation for integrity every day with their every action.
145
Years of Experience
For the past 145 years, the world’s most important products have travelled around the world in Greif industrial packaging.
