Local Action, Global Impact: Celebrating World Environment Day at Crown
Each year around World Environment Day, the United Nations (UN) acknowledges the urgent action required to preserve our environment long-term and provides a global platform for attention on pressing issues such as climate risk, pollution and water consumption.
Our Twentyby30™ program aligns with the UN's goals and drives us to work on numerous targets including energy, water and waste reduction; higher recycling rates; ethical sourcing; safety in the workplace; Diversity & Inclusion and much more.
Progress cannot happen at the right scale without the contribution of employees worldwide. We rely on their proactivity in every location where we operate to find ways to be more efficient, more responsible and more forward-thinking. To maximize our impact as a global organization around World Environment Day and long after, we are encouraging each Crown facility and office location to initiate regional activities that can make a difference in their specific operational footprint or community—whether through production line improvements, employee education sessions, local volunteer work or other inspired ideas.
It is with each employee's creativity and dedication that we can help advance progress around our ambitious goals, support larger industry initiatives and better preserve our world for generations to come.
Building New Best Practices
This same mindset of widespread impact drives our Twentyby30™ Best Practices program, which acknowledges the helpful operational efficiencies, safety improvements and sustainability efforts achieved at individual Crown facilities and designed to align with our larger corporate citizenship goals. Whether involving equipment or process changes, the innovative actions taken at local levels ladder up to our larger Twentyby30™ pillars of focus and are often replicable in our other locations. We continue to implement these ideas where possible across our network to ultimately increase our global impact and make progress around our commitments.
As we focus on World Environment Day this month and witness our teams continuing to make sustainable contributions, we are inspired by the most recent winners of our Best Practices program, which include:
Climate Action:
Our beverage can plant in Custines, France embarked on a multi-year heat recovery project that would reduce the gas used by washer boilers by 60% and improve process reliability by eliminating downtime. In the first year of implementation, the team reduced gas usage by 63% through a series of process improvements. These included integrating new heat exchangers to reduce necessary water temperature, installing a large tank for energy storage, and implementing a control system to ensure process optimization and reduced energy consumption.
Optimum Circularity:
In Tocancipá, Colombia, a project called “Trueque a la lata” was initiated to increase collection and recycling of used beverage cans (UBC’s), which are then sent to DP Watering, a facility that produces coagulant for water treatment processes using the aluminum from the UBCs instead of virgin aluminum. During the first year of the program, the Crown Colombiana employees collected over 20,000 cans. Rather than paying Crown for the material, DP Watering makes a financial donation to “Mano Amiga,” an educational program for low-income students.
Resource Efficiency:
The team based in our LaCrosse, Wisconsin beverage can facility was recognized for reducing water withdrawal by 22% in 2022 and, while doing so, diverting an estimated 170,000 pounds of waste from landfill. The savings stemmed from optimizing water usage in the can washing process. This important effort also led to the team being recognized with a 2023 Chairman’s Sustainability Award.
Working Together:
With more than 40% of safety issues being hand-related, our Transit Packaging Division implemented standardized glove and forearm protection for all job functions within its Angleboard (paper) and ITP locations. Operators and plant leadership systematically rated gloves based on performance, including measures based on protection rating, comfortability and applicability, to reduce future hand-related safety incidents.
The Crown Colombiana team was also recognized for creating a private, comfortable and easily accessible lactation room for mothers to utilize during the workday. The room also contains a refrigerator where breast milk can be stored safely during the day.
Join us in celebrating World Environment Day all month long by following us here and on LinkedIn for updates on our widespread efforts.
Learn more about our Twentyby30™ program here:
https://www.crowncork.com/sustainability/twentyby30-goals
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