Graphic Packaging Builds Momentum Towards Vision 2016 Sustainability Efforts

Graphic Packaging International, Inc. (GPI) employees, students and teachers at schools across the country recycled their milk cartons and planted trees during Earth Week and throughout May as part of the Paperboard Packaging Council’s (PPC) TICCIT Program (Trees Into Cartons, Cartons Into Trees).

The program promotes tree planting as a way to highlight that trees grown for paperboard packaging are sustainably managed and the need for recycling paperboard products. Nationwide, some 950 GPI team members took part in TICCIT programs engaging more than 16,000 students collectively.

GPI team members partnered with the faculty of schools across the nation to teach students about recycling, paper manufacturing, and the lifecycle of trees and paperboard by instructing them on how to plant their own sapling in recycled cartons. Each student also took home a tree to plant.

“Our TICCIT program has grown substantially from its modest beginning in 2009 when we presented to 100 students. We have since educated and planted trees with more than 54,000 students and members of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America and Boy Scouts of America,” said Andy Johnson, Graphic Packaging’s director of government affairs and sustainability, and program creator. “We also developed a TICCIT patch that recognizes scouts who participate in the program and plant a tree,” added Johnson.

The TICCIT program is just one part of the company’s larger sustainability strategy called Vision 2016, aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce the use of non-renewable energy, conserve water by reducing water effluent from its mills, and increase the recovery of paper and paperboard by 2020.

Since 2008, GPI has achieved a 10.9% companywide reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. GPI worked with the city of West Monroe, LA, to reduce its water draw from the community aquifer by 5 million gallons a day. The Santa Clara, CA recycled paperboard mill deployed advanced technologies to remove fiber from its waste stream, reducing waste sent to landfills by 60 percent, and implemented a heat recovery system that reduced its energy requirements by 10 percent. The Macon, GA mill generates almost all of its energy from renewable resources, with excess energy being placed on the power grid.