Sonoco releases 2021-22 corporate responsibility report

Hartsville, South Carolina-based packaging company Sonoco has released its 2021-22 corporate responsibility report, renewing commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage by 2030. The science-based targets within the report align with the Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit global warming temperatures well below -2 C above preindustrial levels. 

The report defines Sonoco’s 2025 and 2030 goals. 2025 commitments include: 

• increasing the equivalent, by weight, of the amount the company recycles or causes to be recycled from 65 percent to 85 percent relative to the volume of product it puts into the marketplace (The company has exceeded this goal, hitting 101 percent in 2021.); 

• ensuring approximately 75 percent of its global rigid plastic packaging is capable of making the relevant on-package recyclable claim; 

• ensuring all production facilities using plastic pellets have systems to prevent environmental discharges and not using resin additives that purport to degrade in landfills or waterways by breaking up into smaller pieces; 

• working with customers to help them achieve their postconsumer recycled content commitments; and 

• by 2024, conducting water risk studies at Sonoco manufacturing facilities, which account for at least 90 percent of the company’s water usage. 

2030 commitments include: 

• reducing absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions at least 25 percent; 

• reducing its Scope 3 emissions in line with the 2C absolute contraction approach resulting in 13.5 percent absolute Scope 3 emissions reduction; and 

• continuing energy efficiency improvement in Sonoco manufacturing plants and reducing energy usage by at least 8 percent. 

In the report, Sonoco says it is improving packaging design, developing new products and manufacturing capabilities to offer sustainable products and investing in infrastructure within its material recovery facilities, or MRFs, and mills to expand the slate of packaging that can be successfully collected, sorted and processed.  

Further demonstrating its circular economy actions, Sonoco has established a proprietary packaging line, EnviroSense. This portfolio features packaging with increased recycled content and recyclability, Sonoco says. Items representing the portfolio include the company’s steel tinplate, paper-based containers, monomaterial flexible packaging, recycled thermoformed plastic containers and bio-based materials. 

In 2022, Sonoco achieved prequalification for How2Recycle Store Drop-off labels for the EnviroFlex PE line of monomaterial flexible packaging products, part of the EnviroSense packaging portfolio.  

Packaging solutions that have received the How2Recycle prequalification for the Store Drop-off recyclable label include: 

• EnviroFlex PE premade pouches and rollstock; 

• EnviroFlex PE bags; and 

• EnviroFlex PE cold seal flow wrap.