Month: January 2024

Originally published in Crown Holding’s 2022 Corporate Responsibility Report

While progress toward all our Twentyby30™ goals is a priority, there are several areas of heightened focus where we feel we can accelerate the impact we can make for our business, our customers and our communities.

Acting on Climate Change 

Slowing climate change requires swift action, innovative thinking and collaboration. As a global manufacturer, we have a key role to play in minimizing and mitigating climate risks and are committed to working internally and with external partners to reduce the global carbon footprint of our business activities. We are doing this in several ways:

We have defined science-based emission reduction targets, approved by the SBTi, confirming that our goals are in alignment with the Paris Agreement to limit the global temperature increase to well below 1.5 degrees Celsius. This commitment continues to push us as a Company and motivates each of our individual employees to be even more ambitious in reducing our environmental impacts and accelerating progress against our stated GHG emissions goals. The efforts that come out of our Twentyby30™ Best Practices program and Chairman’s Sustainability Awards are just a few examples of the ways we are minimizing energy use and emissions.

We committed to Climate Group’s RE100 and joined The Climate Pledge, reinforcing our commitments to prioritize climate change by using renewable energy sources and supporting methods to reduce our carbon footprint. Each year, we continue to increase our reliance on wind and solar power across our operations. For example, all greenfield plants will include solar panel installations. In fact, our Mesquite, Nevada (U.S.) plant will be able to run on close to 100% solar electricity on sunny days when fully operational.

We are also addressing emissions reduction by taking steps to unlock more value from existing resources. For example, our multi-year beverage can light-weighting initiative, which resulted in a substantial 6.44% global average reduction in our standard 12oz. or 330ml can weight, reduces the need for virgin metal and enhances the continual re-use of aluminum. By using less material in each package, we decrease material usage and our overall energy consumption and the associated GHG emissions. Notwithstanding their lighter weight, our beverage cans retain the safety and durability standards our customers and consumers have come to expect.

“Each year, we continue to increase our reliance on wind and solar power across our operations”

Coming Full Circle 

We are committed to supporting impactful recycling practices, educational efforts and policies to boost global recycling in line with the Optimum Circularity pillar of our Twentyby30™ program. This takes shape in many ways:

Setting Ambitious Recycling Rates Targets

Aluminum cans are the only beverage packaging format currently capable of being consumed, recycled and transformed into a new product on the shelf within a 60-day turnaround time. This is a powerful attribute for the material, but greater effort needs to be invested to recapture and reuse as much aluminum as possible. To support this mission, in 2022, we worked with industry partners to establish ambitious new global recycling rates goals for the format.

Designed to be completed by 2030, the targets focus on the inherent recyclability of metal and commitments to foster an ever more responsible industry. The targets are connected to the regions where Crown maintains operations and include reaching a 70% target in the U.S. and an 80% target in the European, Middle Eastern and African countries in which we operate. Our goals include maintaining rates of greater than 90% and 97% in Mexico and Brazil respectively. Countrywide goals for Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam, the three major Asia Pacific markets in which we operate, will be established by 2025, once current recycling rates are further researched, work that is currently underway.

Advocating for Clearer Recycled Content Standards

To facilitate actionable progress toward the aluminum industry’s sustainability goals, we were a lead organizer in the industry’s first Global Aluminium Can Sustainability Summit in 2022. Among the topics discussed at the event was the need for stronger recycled content definitions, including setting an industry standard to create an even playing field for manufacturers and brands. Getting there will require defining what constitutes recycled content, deciding how to measure recycled content levels and educating consumers—steps that will ultimately help us meet our ambitious Twentyby30™ goal of achieving a global recycled content average of 80% by 2030.

To date, Crown has participated in a task force comprised of other engaged industry members working toward a standard that outlines how to measure recycled content in the aluminum value chain. This work should culminate in 2023 with a published standard.

Assessing Circularity Across our Operations 

After joining the Ellen Macarthur Foundation’s Network as a Member in 2021, we completed our first Circulytics survey in 2022. This Circular Economy performance measurement tool has enabled us to assess our full operations, extending beyond materials flow alone. We are currently evaluating the opportunities we have to enhance our circularity performance across our business and will be incorporating them into our processes and plans in the months and years ahead.

Making What’s Old New Again 

Our effort to increase the recycled content levels and circularity of our products extends to our transit packaging portfolio, including tier sheets, slip sheets, top frames and plastic strapping. 

For example, the plastic tier sheets manufactured in our Eden, North Carolina (U.S.) facility contain an average of 18.7% recycled content. Made from a blend of two polypropylenes in multiple sizes and thicknesses to suit different product applications, the durable sheets are washable and reusable up to 100 times. At the end of their useful life, the sheets can be recycled through our Recapture Program. This buyback program allows customers to reduce waste and disposal costs and helps us decrease dependency on new raw material. We regrind the returned sheets and use the recycled polymer in the manufacture of new products. In 2022, the Eden facility recycled 4.7 million pounds of tier sheets, an increase of 71% over 2021. Crown facilities were a significant contributor to the total volume collected, returning 1.4 million pounds of tier sheets. The tier sheets are currently used in 19 of our beverage, food and aerosol can plants in the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Spain.

To supplement the material received through the Recapture Program, several of our Transit Packaging Division’s plants proactively utilize curbside recycling as another resource. Bales of dog food bags, toothpaste tubes and other plastic goods are washed, reground and transformed into new products. In our Eden, North Carolina (U.S.) recycling plant, the emphasis is on collecting high-density polyethylene (HDPE) to produce new flake that is used to manufacture slip sheets in our Kankakee, Illinois (U.S.) facility. In 2021, 60% of the material used to manufacture slip sheets came from curbside recycled materials. In our Florence, Kentucky (U.S.) plant, PET plastic that is collected curbside undergoes a similar process, with recycled material being used to make new plastic strapping.

Work is also underway to better reutilize the polycarbonate and nylon used in our PTC top frames, which create a rigid, interlocking framework to unitize and secure bulk palletized loads. Members of our Eden facility are examining ways to increase access to these materials and optimize the process to reuse it to make new products.

To learn more about Crown Holding’s commitment to corporate responsibility, visit our sustainability webpage.

For full details about Crown Holding’s 2022 Sustainability Report, visit here.

Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT) has led a $32 million Series C round in Silo, the leading provider of modern technology solutions for the supply chain.

Silo’s platform enables distributors and shipper businesses to access financial solutions and data insights, such as accounts payable and accounts receivable automation, inventory management, ledger accounting and financing.

WHY IT MATTERS: A 2023 PwC survey found that while 86% of respondents said their organizations should invest more in technologies that identify, track and measure supply chain risk, only a minority said they’re using them to automate and enhance performance.

Silo employs several AI models to assess a business’s risk and detect anomalies during the funding process and to various components of the perishable supply chain, including underwriting, product taxonomy, document extraction and fraud detection.“Once Silo was in the payment flow, we could pair the data collected from our software with payments products to both underwrite and collect better than any bank,” said Ashton Braun, CEO and co-founder of Silo. “This is the basis for a number of new services Silo is working on within supply chain finance, logistics coordination and internal workflow automation.”

WHY KOCH INVESTED: “What Silo is doing is impressive because they are providing actionable solutions in a complex, competitive market that bring immediate benefits to businesses using their products,” said KDT Managing Director Brendon Durkin. “Given the success they’ve had in perishable foods, we think there is an opportunity to apply their products to other supply chains and commodities. We’re excited to see what they’ll be able to do next.”

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: “We’re pleased to have built such a strong base of investors who bring a diverse set of expertise to the table. Koch Industries is one of the greatest supply chain companies. Adding KDT to the team validates what we’re trying to achieve and brings additional supply chain expertise as we take Silo to the next level. Pairing that with the existing investor base, which has deep technical and fintech knowledge is very exciting as we expand our impact within the supply chain in 2023 and beyond,” Ashton said.

In an interview with TechCrunch, he explained Silo’s ongoing impact: “These financing programs are helping small- and medium-sized businesses within perishable supply chains scale their operations, find stability in a rapidly consolidating landscape and compete at a level that has historically been set aside for only the elite, larger businesses within the industry. Leveraging a combination of data insights and access to additional working capital, through financing, gives companies the confidence to execute on market opportunities that give them a stronger seat at a rapidly consolidating table.”

IN ACTION: Their customers have seen impressive results, including three Miami-based distributors who experienced a 350% increase in revenue after a year of using Silo Capital and its “Instant Pay” program.

GO DEEPER: Others participating in the round included existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Haystack Capital, Tribe Capital, Collate Capital and Moore Capital.

It’s also coupled with another $100 million from First Citizens Bank to launch a new funding program called “Cash Advance” to accelerate Silo’s growth of financial services solutions and product development.

Read more about Silo in TechCrunch.

Las Vegas Sands

With a capacity-building investment from Sands Cares, the Asian Community Development Council (ACDC) has created a series of events, awareness programs and engagement initiatives to increase access to medical and social services among Southern Nevada’s diverse Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.

Announced in mid-2023, the latest round of Sands Cares funding for ACDC continued support for the Healthy Asians and Pacific Islanders (HAPI) Medical Center and the API Language Link, which provide critical in-language health and social services to the Southern Nevada AAPI community.

Since that time, ACDC has used the Sands Cares investment to create a series of community health and wellness events to boost awareness of the medical center’s services and drive visits. ACDC co-hosted more than 40 events that delivered health screenings, wellness information and 2,000 vaccines to 1,500 clients.

The nonprofit planned events at venues trusted by the Southern Nevada AAPI community, including grocery stores, the Uu Dam Pagoda Vietnamese Temple, Northern Nevada Muslim Community Center and the Martin Luther King Jr. Senior Center. Medical center staff and care providers communicated with attendees in their preferred languages to explain services available to them.

According to ACDC, health and wellness events at these locations have been a successful strategy, driving more than 250 patients in 2023 to seek care at the HAPI Medical Center – in the language with which they feel most comfortable.

ACDC also has pursued expansion of its API Language Link with Sands Cares funding. In 2021, Sands enabled ACDC to launch the language service, which connects Southern Nevada AAPI community members to a variety of social services. With Sands Cares’ most recent investment, ACDC has expanded the language link to include nine language specialists who can provide support in 10 languages.

The API Language Link connects community members to health care services at the HAPI Medical Center and ACDC’s other direct service locations, including a culturally sensitive food distribution warehouse in Las Vegas and a second community resource center in Reno, Nevada.

ACDC followed a strategy similar to the health and wellness community engagement series to expand its food outreach efforts by planning a series of pop-up events in trusted places where the organization provided food staples and supplies. Venues included the Buddhaya Nandharam Temple, the Wat Buddhica Khmer Temple, the Diwali Food Distribution and a partnership with the Filipino American Educators of Nevada (FAME) for a holiday food distribution event.

API Language Link staff were on site at the pop-up events to educate about the array of services ACDC offers. Through the food outreach series, the nonprofit provided nearly 2,500 families and nearly 6,000 individuals with food supplies.

“Sands Cares has made it possible for us to pursue a robust slate of events in the places where our community members feel most comfortable so we can further establish the HAPI Medical Center and the API Language Link as trusted resources for our communities,” Vida Lin, founder and president of ACDC, said. “We are grateful that Sands understands the need for in-language services to increase access to critical resources. The Sands Cares support we received has helped ensure we reach as many people as possible with the broad array of services we provide.”

ACDC’s mission is to improve the overall well-being of AAPI communities through initiatives spanning food assistance, voter registration, health insurance support, pathways to citizenship and health care. Since 2021, Sands has provided $425,000 to support this mission through the HAPI Medical Center and API Language Link.

The company’s partnership with ACDC is representative of Sands Cares’ focus on providing hardship relief and enabling underserved groups, including diverse communities, to overcome barriers and gain access to critical and empowering services.

To learn more about Sands’ community engagement initiatives, read the company’s latest ESG report: https://www.sands.com/2022-environmental-social-and-governance-report/

Schneider Electric

Government and business leaders, climate experts, and other stakeholders gathering for the COP28 United Nations Climate Change Conference in December know that accelerating the energy transition is more important than ever. We are just 0.3°C away from overshooting pre-industrial targets, according to the World Energy Outlook 2023.

The good news is that more and more companies are making big efforts to reduce their carbon footprints. But what, exactly, are “their” emissions?

The easiest emissions to understand and address are what’s called Scope 1 and 2—those that are directly or indirectly produced by a company’s own operations. These include their energy consumption and the burning of fuel by their fleet of vehicles.

By far the largest part of a company’s carbon emissions, however—more than 70%, according to the UN Global Compact—come from the value chain (upstream and downstream activities). These “Scope 3” emissions come from suppliers’ goods and services, delivering products, using their products, and disposing their products when they reach their end of life.

So, businesses that are serious about decarbonization need to look beyond their own operations and address their entire value chain. And they need to realize that encouraging and helping their suppliers, customers, and other business partners to strive for greater energy efficiency—through electrification and digital and automation technologies—and cleaner energy procurement, is a huge part of the answer.

Recently, I discussed all this with other experts in the field at an FT Digital Dialogues event. I’ve summarized my ideas here to help other business leaders.

Navigating the challenges of Scope 3

Undoubtedly, there’s a lot to gain by increasing energy efficiency in value chains—both to lower corporate and global emissions, and in terms of costs. After all, investing in energy efficiency is investing in a saving. Crucially, when companies in a connected ecosystem decarbonize, the speed of progress increases rapidly.

But Scope 3 emissions are notoriously difficult to tackle. Companies lack direct control over what their supply-chain partners do to lower their energy use and carbon footprint. Their suppliers are often geographically and organizationally disparate. And some may operate in hard-to-abate heavy industries.

There’s also limited visibility when trying to account accurately for emissions from assets or activities that a company neither owns nor operates. Many suppliers are often small-medium enterprises (SMEs) with little or no in-house expertise or resources to prioritize this.

All of this comes amid of lingering post-pandemic disruptions, see-sawing raw materials and energy costs, and escalating geopolitical tensions.

So, how can companies navigate these hurdles?

Rethinking Scope 3 emissions strategies and setting targets

Any company looking to decarbonize across all scopes needs to break the process down into three key stages: strategize, digitize, and decarbonize.

The first step—strategize—involves establishing a baseline and setting strategic ambitions. The second—digitize—is about tracking real-time energy use and carbon impact using digital tools. The third—decarbonize—is about transitioning to renewable energy, electrifying operations, and driving efficiency.

Schneider has researched and mapped out scenarios to reach net-zero emission goals based on technology trends, climate action, and policy changes. We predict that demand-side actions—including optimizing energy use and shifting to electrically-powered processes—will make up around 55% of the carbon reduction required by 2050.

Digital technologies are central to this. Digital makes data visible, and if you can see it, you can track it. They provide businesses with the data they need to adjust and enhance their efficiency across assets, processes, and operations.

Schneider Electric’s Resource Advisor platform, for example, helps track emissions data against key metrics. Zeigo Activate empowers small and medium-sized companies to measure their emissions, build a decarbonization roadmap, and access solution providers. One solution is designed for large companies and the other one for SMEs, thus covering the whole ecosystem.

Making Scope 3 decarbonization progress through collaboration

We’ve been making strong progress on upstream Scope 3 decarbonization with our top 1,000 suppliers. The Zero Carbon Project, launched in April 2021, has a goal to halve their operational carbon emissions by 2025. By helping our suppliers set clear goals and milestones, we’ve armed them with the digital tools, training, and support to get started, and given them access to a community of like-minded firms to share what they learn.

Another concrete example of collaboration is our Energize program. Here, Schneider Electric is advising 16 of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies on their renewable-energy procurement plans to deliver system-level decarbonization. So far, over 360 participating supplier companies have purchased more than 47,000 megawatt hours of aggregate Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs). The similar Catalyze program also works on a supply chain cohort approach, this time across the semiconductor industry.

Finally, on November 29th, ahead of COP 28, the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders—CEOs from over 60 major companies, who have committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, including Schneider Electric—have launched the Scope 3 Upstream Action Plan. The Plan will see them set targets, encourage suppliers to increase transparency of their carbon footprints, and ultimately disclose and reduce Scope 3 upstream emissions.

On the Scope 3 downstream side, Schneider’s goal is to reduce emissions from the use of our products over their lifetime. We are designing our products and solutions to be more energy and material efficient, requiring less hardware to deliver an outcome, and we provide EcoCare Services to keep products healthy for longer.

Recently, Schneider Electric partnered with ArcelorMittal to use their steel produced from recycled and renewable material to manufacture our electrical products. Thus, we are saving up to 70% of CO2 emissions in the production of our PanelSeT enclosures. We also provide SF6-free equipment and SF6 recovery services to cut emissions from this climate-harmful gas.

Not sure how to begin?

Decarbonizing your value chain is a significant undertaking, and many companies are unsure of what targets are realistic and achievable.

By partnering with Schneider Electric, you can access the support and resources you need to succeed. The urgency of Scope 3 decarbonization is also an opportunity for companies to take ownership, with a trusted advisor by their side, and help their supplier networks do the same.

Cisco was honored last year to win the top spot on People’s 2023 List of Companies That Care, and a key factor was our employee culture of giving back.

We’ve been on a multi-year journey to engage our employees for positive impact at scale. Four years in, the results surprised even us. Not only did we see significant increases in donations and volunteerism to our global communities, but tangible benefits back to Cisco.

“We learned from Cisco’s own business transformation to make giving back a habit.”

Leveraging Business Transformation for Employee Giving

It all started with an audacious goal around 2016 to engage 80% of our employees in giving back annually by the year 2020. We diligently adopted best practices in the field such as offering year-round donation matching, raised annual match amounts to $25,000 per employee, and offered 40 hours of volunteer time off per year. These were an excellent foundation and edged our engagement up to 50%. Good, but not enough.

The breakthrough came when we shifted to learn from Cisco’s own business transformation and re-design around the question: How do we make giving back a habit? We landed on these design principles:

Center on inclusion and make it simple for nonparticipants to take their first give back action. For example, we provided new hires with $15 donation credits to direct to their preferred charity on their first day at Cisco.Leverage digitization to engage at scale. From virtual volunteerism to Webex chatbots that encouraged people to donate, we deployed digital features to keep it top of mind, make it easy to get started, and keep coming back.Follow the data. In near real time, we tested new programs and approaches, tweaked campaigns and communications, and monitored adoption rates all to help us get the best fit for and connection with our people.

We continued to iterate through 2019, and that year we hit our goal with 81% employee participation. Since then, we haven’t looked back. We have been sustaining these rates, including an increase to 85% participation in fiscal year 2023.

Hitting our goal felt like a feat unto itself, but what came out of it was even better—increased social impact and substantial business value. Let’s look at the numbers.

Leveraging Employee Giving for Social Impact

Not surprisingly, engaging at scale grew our employee volunteerism and giving exponentially. From 2016 to 2020 when we first hit 80%, we saw a 176% increase in volunteer hours and a 150% increase in employee donations and matching.

And each year that we’ve hit 80%, we have sustained record levels of contributions, providing a total of $130 million to over 7,000 nonprofits over the past four years. When you look closely at the nearly one million actions taken over these years, you see meaningful stories of change, like:

400 employees and friends hiking the Camino de Santiago trail in Spain to raise funds for global cancer charitiesSix Cisco engineers designing and installing a network for homeless shelters in San Jose, California, so residents can access information and resources for a better lifeCisco employee Daniel volunteers every week to take live calls with the Trevor Project to support LGBTQ+ youth experiencing crisis

Leveraging Social Impact for Business Value

Cisco’s purpose is to Power an Inclusive Future for All, and at the heart of this is the belief that doing good for the world is good for business—and we have the data to prove that it is.

With the help of Cisco’s Research and Intelligence team, we conducted a longitudinal study to explore the relationship between giving back at Cisco and individual, leader, and team performance data. We examined the first three years of Cisco’s 80% engagement data—who gave back, what they did, and how frequently—against performance data to analyze business factors like attrition, promotion, bonuses, and recognition.

The results were eye-opening. Compared to employees who did not take any community impact action, those who took at least one per year stayed longer at Cisco, had higher bonuses, had higher odds of promotion, and received more recognition from others.

The same held true for specific subgroups like teams, leaders, and new hires. For example, when a team collectively engaged in giving back, the whole team had higher rates of promotion and higher recognition.

Particularly compelling was that when leaders engaged in giving back, their team was more likely to give back as well. Such leaders had 20% lower attrition rates for their teams than their non-engaged counterparts.

Doing Good for the World is Good for Business

When we put these elements together—social impact and business value—this is the foundation for building a purpose-driven employee culture. Our journey has helped us demonstrate that making a positive impact to our world also makes an incredibly positive impact for Cisco.

And like any good story, the end is just the beginning. While we continue to engage at scale, we also invite our broader ecosystem of business partners, customers, and suppliers to join us. Check out our Partnering for Purpose blog stories for examples and contact us to share your story.

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