Pregis Pledges To Protect Environment
By Canadian Packaging Staff
Sustainability Fabrication Sustainability Pregis Corp. Protective packagingSpecialty packaging products manufacturer Pregis Corp. has used the summer months to launch a sweeping, company-wide sustainability initiative aimed at positioning itself as the North American leader in the protective packaging supply chain.
“At Pregis we dedicate ourselves to bringing forward new technology and solutions that limit harm to the environment while maximizing benefits to our customers,” says Kevin Baudhuin, president of the Deerfield, Ill.-based Pregis Protective Packaging North America, manufacturer of a broad range of air-cushioning, void-fill, hexacomb, bubble-mailers, foam-sheet and other protective packaging systems.
“We seek to protect, support and enhance our customer’s experiences with our products while preserving natural resources for future generations,” adds Baudhuin.
“We will continue to evolve our packaging so that its life-cycle is one of reuse, renew and recycle.”
According to Pregis, which currently operates 47 facilities in 18 countries around the world, all of the company’s marketing claims about the environmental attributes of its products and services will be backed up by feature-rich content on the company’s website
, including downloads, position statements and achievement benchmarks.”
Some of the company’s stated goals and targets include:
• Reclaiming up to 99 per cent of manufacturing scrap and reintroducing it back into the manufacturing process;
• Carrying out “density-reduction programs” across all product lines to limit the amount of discarded material entering the waste-stream.
• Engineering products in a way that maximizes packaging efficiency and minimizes application-specific waste.
• Completing energy audits in all of its facilities and carrying out all the identified improvements in the area of energy conservation.
• Striving to go beyond environmental regulation compliance with “state-of-the-art” pollution abatement equipment.
• Promoting environmental knowledge and awareness to both Pregis employees and customers.
The company says it has identified several areas in its logistics and shipping operations where it has already made significant improvements in the area of fossil-fuel consumption and cube utilization.
Compared to 2006, last year’s sustainability efforts enabled the company to:
• Reduce the number of trucks on the road by almost 1,200 vehicles.
• Reduce the distance traveled by trucks by more than 500,000 miles.
• Consume 93,000 fewer gallons of diesel fuel—thereby reducing CO2 emissions by 2.1 million pounds.
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