Berry Global seeks to cut 100MM kWh of electricity use; already reduces carbon emissions by 45K tonnes

Evansville, IN-based Berry Global Group, Inc. approves projects that will help it achieve the new milestone goal to eliminate 100 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity from its operations. Berry surpassed its initial target to eliminate 1 million kWh from operations in 2020 and is leveraging that success to reach its 100-million kWh goal. With an original deadline of September 2021, Berry is ahead of schedule in achieving these project approvals.

Through the sharing of best practices, Berry team members collaborated across 324 energy saving projects to achieve record energy reduction. In addition, five million kWh were saved through improvements that did not require capital investment. These reductions in energy directly reduce Berry’s scope 1 and 2 emissions, which inherently reduce customer’s scope 3 emissions.

The emissions saved from this remarkable reduction in energy is equal to the CO2 emissions to power over 8,500 homes for one year, charge 8.6 billion smartphones, and greenhouse gas emissions of 15,000 passenger vehicles for one year.1

“In line with our Science-Based Targets to minimize our environmental impacts, we are closely evaluating our energy usage as an important step toward a net-zero economy. Achieving a goal such as this requires the collective expertise of team members at all of our 285 facilities working toward the same goal of lower carbon emissions,” says Tom Salmon, chairman/CEO of Berry Global.

Accomplished through hundreds of small projects, team members from around the world led initiatives to decrease energy use in Berry’s facilities. Just one example can be seen in Berry’s Terno d’Isola, Italy, facility, where team members implemented programming to automatically shut off equipment when not needed, eliminating 70 mins of energy every day. Through implementation of the Terno d’Isola’s energy project, the site saved a total of 45,000 kWh, equaling a total of 31.9 MT in carbon emissions, or enough energy to fuel seven cars for one year.1

“The one million kWh challenge was just a reminder of the little things we can all do in our plants and offices to reduce kWh consumption, like turning off the lights, turning off conveyors, and taking advantage of free cooling, but the transition to the 100 million kWh challenge in 2021 was an effort to highlight the results we can realize when we work together with the specific purpose of reducing energy consumption,” adds Rodgers Greenawalt, exec vp-Operations for Berry Global.

Combining its global presence and local agility to solve this 285 site-wide challenge, Berry leveraged employee ideas for saving energy and brought them to life on a global scale, highlighting what can be accomplished when working together toward a common goal.

1Calculated using: https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator