Never Compromise
Product stewardship remains the focus of the Never Compromise pillar of our Twentyby30 program. Our approach aims to minimize the environmental and social impacts of our products throughout their entire lifecycle and includes three core components:
- Leveraging eco-design techniques and manufacturing innovation to minimize the footprint of our products and processes for the benefit of the environment and people. This includes examining a range of issues during the development process including how to reduce resource consumption and eliminate waste and emissions. The benefits of our design and innovation extend to our customers in the form of a lower product footprint, which in turn helps them meet their own sustainability goals.
- Complying with food contact and chemical safety standards to ensure products meet customer expectations without compromising the wellbeing of consumers, employees and the environment.
- Expanding our responsible and ethical sourcing program to address the social and environmental impacts of the materials and products we purchase. This includes closely examining suppliers, encouraging them to reduce their environmental and social footprint, seeking third-party verification and training our employees on ethical procurement.
Our 2030 Goals
Learn how each of these goals aligns with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Maintaining our reputation of responsible practices requires our efforts to work in harmony with those of our suppliers to create products trusted by millions of consumers every day. As such, we have established the following product stewardship goals for the Twentyby30 program:
Decrease the lifecycle footprint of our products and processes through eco-design and manufacturing innovation. Crown commits to devoting at least 50% of its Research & Development (R&D) technology developments toward minimizing the footprint of its products and manufacturing processes.
By 2022, all operations meet a new consolidated "One Crown Standard." This new standard will unify existing standards of migration, toxicology and safety utilized in our various geographical locations. By 2025, Crown will have screened all food contact materials for the presence of Chemicals of Concern (COC) and will take action to eliminate them where deemed necessary.
By 2025, all suppliers determined as high risk are assessed by third-party verification assessments. By 2030, 100% of Crown’s core raw materials and service suppliers, by spend, are assessed and comply with Crown Responsible and Ethical Sourcing policies and requirements, with an interim target of achieving 75% by 2025.
Taking Action
back to topOur Twentyby30 goals are designed to proactively protect our business from the risks associated with climate change and contribute to the international efforts to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius. We will achieve our goals by taking the following actions:
Decrease product lifecycle footprint
- Utilize Design for the Environment (DfE) and lifecycle thinking to help us decrease the footprint of our product and manufacturing processes footprint for the benefit of Crown, our customers and end consumers. To do this, we will focus on areas such as lightweighting, material and spoilage reduction, increased resource efficiencies, improved safety, greater recyclability or reusability and enhanced manufacturing process controls.
Food contact and chemical safety
- Unify existing standards and food contact requirements from around the world into One Crown Standard.
- Implement the One Crown Standard across the Company’s global Divisions.
- Screen all food contact materials for COC by 2025.
- Eliminate COC when an alternative solution is feasible and available.
- Submit materials for independent safety evaluations if the COC cannot be eliminated. If the evaluation identifies an insufficient safety margin, we will work with the material supplier to reduce exposure and mitigate potential risks.
Responsible and ethical sourcing
- Expand our responsible sourcing program globally.
- Incorporate social and environmental criteria into new contracts or when existing contracts are reviewed/renewed/reappraised.
- Deploy third-party assessments and audits for goods and services purchased that fall into risky categories.
- Seek proof of compliance with our Ethical and Responsible Sourcing Program requirements.
- Encourage our suppliers to utilize third-party organizations such as the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) and the Aluminum Stewardship Initiative (ASI) to help us verify the credibility of their risk screening.
- Train our employees on ethical procurement.
Our Sustainability Stories: Progress in Practice
back to topOur employees and operations around the world are already doing their part when it comes to climate action. Here are just a few examples of how they are making a difference:
Fort Bend, Texas
Reconfiguring its spray gun system yielded notable improvements in this team’s can coating processes as it adapted to a new product line. By installing a new dual-gun device, the facility has achieved greater precision in its application. The result of these efforts not only ensure greater product protection and preservation, but also lower the weight of each can by 40mg and the overall VOC levels at the plant by 30%--major achievements that demonstrate our commitments to delivering a safe product with a Design for the Environment (DfE) approach.
Osmaniye, Turkey
Implementing an effective separation system contributed to this plant’s 85% reduction in coolant waste. By successfully extracting water from the waste and sending it for treatment, the plant is helping to preserve the availability of water and is also minimizing its production of hazardous waste—a positive outcome at every angle.
Tunis, Tunisia
Taking a comprehensive approach toward resource management and examining processes across the production line, this team made notable strides in reducing consumption and waste. The plant’s efforts resulted a 7% reduction in water usage, 4% reduction in electricity, 5% reduction in coating and chemical consumption, 12% reduction in ink consumption, 44% reduction in waste to landfill and 7% reduction in effluent rejects—all upholding our goals of minimizing overall lifecycle footprint as we deliver to our customers.
UN Sustainability Development Goals
back to topIn 2015, the United Nations General Assembly annonunced 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to address global changes and set a blueprint for action to achieve the goals by 2030.
Our sustainable priorities are aligned with the SDGs so that our actions can contribute to a greater collective impact. Learn more about our alignment with each goal.
Additional Resources
back to topHave questions about our approach to climate action? Contact us at sustainability@crowncork.com.
