In 2021, through an employee-led 100 Million kWh Challenge, our company committed to a strategy of investing over $30 million to foster energy reduction at our facilities. The challenge spanned 300 sites located in 39 countries across North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Berry engaged a team of over 900 engineers, technical leaders, and maintenance groups from across the globe through daily communications, webinars, and on-site energy events.
This effort was the brainchild of Jim Belbas, Berry’s Vice President of Continuous Improvement and Sustainability, who worked with others across our global company to reduce Berry’s carbon footprint by conserving operational energy. To support teams across the globe, Jim and other ‘Energy Leaders’ helped them purchase more efficient motors, put in energy control systems, and more. They also developed a rough calculator to help colleagues understand how much money and emissions they were saving by reducing their energy use. A kilowatt hour (kWh) is a measure of electricity usage over time.
Through the sharing of best practices, Berry team members collaborated across 1,100 energy-saving projects in two years to achieve record energy reduction of over 200M kWh companywide – equal to the CO2 emissions from powering more than 16,000 homes for one year. For example, Berry’s facility in Terno d’Isola, Italy implemented programming to automatically shut off equipment when not needed, eliminating 70 minutes of energy every day. These reductions in energy not only lower Berry’s operational (Scope 1 and 2) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but they also lower our customer’s supply-chain (Scope 3) emissions.
As a result, our 100M kWh Challenge was awarded the Association of Energy Engineers’ (AEE) 2022 International Energy Project of the Year. This successful challenge is a clear example of how seemingly small ideas can balloon into tremendous impact. Combining our international presence and local agility to address a major, global challenge, Berry leveraged employee ideas for saving energy and brought them to life on a global scale – highlighting how much we can accomplish when we work together toward a common goal.
Personal Passions Driving Positive Change: More Reducing
“The fact is we are a manufacturer, and we are going to use energy. But if we can make the same product using less energy, why not? I want More Reducing because it’s not only better for the environment by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it’s also good for our business because energy is one of our biggest spends.”
Jim Belbas, Vice President, Continuous Improvement and Sustainability, Berry Global
“Improving operational efficiency and actively managing energy can be one of our largest opportunities to reduce waste, lower costs, and lessen our environmental impact. I want More Reducing to do more with less because it all comes back to taking care of Mother Nature.”
Zach Marvel, Director of Electrical Systems and Energy, Berry Global
“The best part of our 100M kWh challenge is that it motivated MORE BERRY TEAMMATES from MORE BERRY PLANTS than I’ve ever experienced before! Collaborative efforts like this can’t be accomplished in meetings or conference rooms alone. More Reducing takes Berry teammates around the globe working hard to improve our efficiency by coming with ideas that will allow us to significantly reduce energy consumption. Truly a win for Berry on all fronts – the environment, our customers, and our investors.”
Rodgers Greenawalt, Executive Vice President of Operations, Berry Global
“I'm most passionate about More Reducing because reduction is at the top of the waste management hierarchy. As our growing population continues to put pressure on our planet’s natural resources, we need to use them more efficiently. Using less energy reduces greenhouse gas emissions and keeping resources in use and out of our environment reduces landfill and ocean waste.”
Robert Flores, Vice President, Sustainability, Berry Global
Achieving More Together
- Collaborated across 1,100 energy-saving projects globally
- Achieved record energy reduction of over 200M kWh companywide – equal to the CO2 emissions from powering over 16,000 homes for one year
- Reduced Berry’s operational GHG emissions and our customers’ supply-chain emissions
We are listening for the next opportunity to act. Share your personal sustainability passion here and let’s accomplish more together!