UNITED CAPS Issues Interim Sustainability Report
UNITED CAPS, an international manufacturer of caps and closures, today issued an interim sustainability report outlining its sustainability targets and how its sustainability strategies inform all of its efforts, from the plant to the consumer’s hand. The update outlines priorities, and progress against them, through 2025.
“Everything that bears our name comes with our commitment to always act ethically, create products responsibility, maintain respectful workplaces, invest in communities and be good stewards of the environment,” said Benoit Henckes, CEO of UNITED CAPS. “In this report, we provide updates to our sustainability strategies, our progress toward our long-term targets, and much more. Sustainability is in our DNA and so is transparency. We will continue to build on all of the programs outlined in this update, continuing our focus on being close to customers by delivering caps and closures that enable Total Packaging Solutions in a sustainable way.”
To ensure maximum focus on its sustainability targets, UNITED CAPS has appointed a Sustainability Leader from the executive team to oversee the development of goal setting and attainment in order to meet current needs without compromising the future in every aspect of the production and value chain. Rony Van Regenmortel, Chief Project Officer for UNITED CAPS, who will be filling this role, has vast experience across nearly all parts of the UNITED CAPS organization over 35 years.
The company has established sustainability targets in two broad areas: environment and product responsibility as outlined below, with the goal of achieving them by 2025 or earlier.
Environment
- Reduce electricity consumption to 1,7 kWh/kg.
- Reduce final/ultimate waste by 30% versus 2017.
- Reduce the percentage of plastic waste to 3%.
- Use a minimum of two kilotons of bio-based resins in 2020.
- Establish five projects with post-consumer resin (PCR) in collaboration with customers.
Product Responsibility
- Validate backup components for all major products/customers.
- Ensure 100% of products are recyclable by 2025.
- Evaluate 80% of all products with respect to light-weighting by 2022 to optimize resin consumption.
“UNITED CAPS has already made progress against these targets as outlined in the report,” Henckes continued. “This includes successfully lowering energy consumption across our factories by 10% over the last three years, recycling 85% of production waste, and achieving a 30% reduction in waste compared to 2017.
We have also reduced our own carbon footprint by 14% in the last three years, and we are using no oil or gas heating in our facilities by capturing the heat created by chillers and compressors. We are quite pleased with these results, but we also know there is much more that needs to be done. The entire UNITED CAPS team is dedicated to ensuring we meet or exceed our stated sustainability targets.”
A key effort UNITED CAPS engaged in that demonstrates this dedication was its response to the European Union directive on Single-Use Plastic. Henckes stated, “In early 2018, UNITED CAPS quickly determined that challenges presented by this proposed Directive faced an entire industry and required solutions from across the whole industry.
Whilst others adopted a more negative, disruptive approach to the proposed Directive, UNITED CAPS worked with like-minded organizations from throughout the supply chain to form the Association for Closure Tethering (ACT) Group. We developed superior tethered closures for a changing planet, the product of supreme collaboration, born ready to deliver maximum compliance with minimum disruption. This is just one example of our out-of-the-box thinking relative to the way we conduct our business, especially as it relates to protecting the planet.”
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