Graphic Packaging builds momentum towards Vision 2016

Graphic Packaging employees, students and teachers at schools across the country recycled their milk cartons and planted trees during Earth Week and throughout May as part of the Paperboard Packaging Council's (PPC) Trees into Cartons, Cartons into Trees (TICCIT) program. TICCIT promotes tree planting as a way to highlight that trees grown for paperboard packaging are sustainably managed and the need for recycling paperboard products. Nationwide, some 950 Graphic Packaging employees took part in TICCIT programs engaging more than 16,000 students collectively.

Graphic Packaging team members partnered with the faculty of schools across the nation to teach students about recycling, paper manufacturing, and the lifecycle of trees and paperboard by instructing them on how to plant their own sapling in recycled cartons. Each student also took home a tree to plant.

The TICCIT program is just one part of Graphic Packaging’s larger sustainability strategy called Vision 2016, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the use of non-renewable energy, conserving water by reducing water effluent from its mills, and increasing the recovery of paper and paperboard by 2020.

Since 2008, Graphic Packaging has achieved a 10.9 percent company-wide reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Graphic Packaging worked with the city of West Monroe, Louisiana to reduce its water draw from the community aquifer by five million gallons a day, with its Santa Clara, California recycled paperboard mill has deployed technologies to remove fiber from its waste stream, reducing waste sent to landfills by 60 percent, and implemented a heat recovery system that has reduced its energy requirements by 10 percent. Elsewhere, the Macon, Georgia mill generates almost all of its energy from renewable resources, with excess energy being placed on the power grid.

Andy Johnson, Graphic Packaging's director of government affairs and sustainability, and program creator, said: ‘Our TICCIT program has grown substantially from its modest beginning in 2009 when we presented to 100 students. We have since educated and planted trees with more than 54,000 students and members of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America and Boy Scouts of America.

‘We also developed a TICCIT patch that recognizes scouts who participate in the program and plant a tree.’

‘We have deliberately linked our environmental performance to our business goals and values,’ added Mike Doss, Graphic Packaging's chief operating officer. ‘Commitment to continuous safety and environmental improvement is core to how we operate. Teamwork brings many different ideas to help us address environmental issues creatively, share best practices across our many locations and make a difference in our communities.’

Graphic Packaging has recently made a number of business-oriented developments, including agreeing the sale of its multi-wall bag business to Mondi and the completion of its takeover of Benson Group.