Environmental

We believe that the packaging industry must move beyond the make/use/dispose behaviors of the past and actively work toward, and advocate for, a circular economy. By circulating used plastic and packaging, we keep it in the economy and out of the environment.

Collaboration is essential to achieving a more circular economy, so we work with partners, suppliers and customers who share our vision for a more circular economy.

Aptar has joined the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Circular Economy 100 (CE100) Network. Through the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, we’ve signed the New Plastics Economy Global Commitment to address plastic waste and pollution at its source.

Today, we offer a range of products made from post-consumer resin (PCR). Our Product Sustainability Strategy is aligned to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and we are committed to seeking additional opportunities for more sustainable resins and recyclability of our products. Our Product Sustainability Team is addressing customer, consumer and regulatory expectations for sustainable product offerings while focusing on being an active and public advocate for the industry transformation and the policy interventions needed to deliver our vision–that all packaging is collected and then recycled.

We are also communicating our targets. We commit that a minimum of 10% of our dispensing solutions’ contents will come from recycled materials by 2025 for products sold to the beauty, personal care, home care, food and beverage markets. This target is dependent upon adequate availability of material suitable for our markets, including those requiring regulatory approvals, and customer policies.

We are actively working to identify and qualify new materials, such as PCRs that can be approved for food contact. That is why we have partnered with PureCycle Technologies, a leading innovator in the field of Ultra-Pure Recycled Polypropylene (UPRP). We continue to explore opportunities to source other sustainable resins and we are actively collaborating with our customers on refillable products by supporting our customers’ participation in the circular e-commerce platforms such as TerraCycle’s refillable initiative called “Loop.”

We continue to take steps to make our operations more energy efficient and reduce our impact on the environment. We are proud of our grass-roots initiative to make our operating sites “landfill free” (LFF). Our internal LFF Program was one of our first established operational sustainability programs which was meant to recognize sites that achieved a reuse or recycle rate of 90% of their operational waste. We use an independent third-party contractor to audit each location and to verify the certification. At the end of 2018, 26 Aptar manufacturing sites had achieved LFF certification and we continue to add sites each year.

We are also sourcing renewable energy at many locations and according to our plan, we continue to increase the number of sites using renewable energy each year. By the end of 2019, we will have surpassed our target of having 50% of our total electricity consumption sourced from renewable sources.

Thanks to an increase in the use of renewable energy, we can decrease our greenhouse gas emissions. We annually report our emissions via the CDP global platform, formerly called the Climate Disclosure Project.