Under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, nearly every country in the world put forth their plans for cutting greenhouse gasses. and collectively capping global temperature rise at “well below” 2 degrees Celsius.
In December 2018, António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations, in a speech in Katowice, Poland, said “It is plain we are way off course. We are still not doing enough, nor moving fast enough, to prevent irreversible and catastrophic climate disruption.”
We have to give credit to the many countries who have been working to put in place legislation and regulations to cut greenhouse gas emissions and transition to renewable energy, but not all governments are willing to join in this global effort.
We’re excited to share more about our efforts in decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and our work with RECYPartnership as one of CR Magazine’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens. Learn more about our work toward a sustainable future here on TriplePundit: cbnYSKZ5Sd
— Ball Corporation (@BallCorpHQ) May 23, 2019
This is where the private sector has filled in the gap, taking it upon themselves to step up to the plate with science-based emissions targets that support the fight against climate change, reports Triple Pundit. To date, 554 companies are taking science-based climate action and 210 companies have approved science-based targets.
Only the most ambitious corporate targets are accepted by the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), a partnership between CDP, the U.N. Global Compact, the World Resources Institute, and WWF.
Ball Corporation environmental record
Ball Corporation has been around since its founding in 1880 in Buffalo, New York. Anyone who has ever done home canning should be familiar with Ball jars. Ball exited the canning jar business in 1993, and over the years since, has expanded and diversified into other business ventures, including aerospace technology, and became the world’s largest manufacturer of recyclable metal beverage and food containers.
Ball Corp. began its first sustainability effort in 2006 and issued its first annual sustainability report in 2008. Every year since that time, the company has shown improvement in its sustainability efforts.
In 2014 Newsweek ranked the Ball Corporation in third place in its Top 10 Green Companies in the U.S. in 2014. According to Ball’s director of global sustainability, Bjoern Kulmann, the company began the process for setting its target with the SBTI back in 2016.
Just two years later, in August 2018, Ball published its goal to reduce absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 27 percent by 2030. Ball expects the goal to be approved by SBTi by the end of this year, Kulmann said.
Perhaps even more amazing, in April this year, Ball Corporation announced the signing of power contracts for a 161 MW wind farm and a 227 MW solar farm. This means that the company will procure 100 percent of its North American electric load through renewable sources by 2021, according to PV Magazine.
However, Ball Corp. is looking toward the future and this means there is more to come. John A. Hayes, chairman, president and CEO of Ball was quoted as saying “Utilizing renewable energy is an important lever to further enhance the sustainability credentials of our packaging and we’re exploring similar opportunities across our global footprint.”
