Over the past year, the dedication of our teams has allowed us to live up to our purpose and responsibility to society: supporting our customers, partners and our communities, and providing essential products and solutions that millions of people rely on every day.
Several publications have recognized Aptar as a global, responsible and sustainable company. Aptar was named in the top 100 of the “Most Sustainable Companies in the U.S.” three years in a row by Barron’s, in the top 100 “America’s Most Responsible Companies 2020 and 2021” by Newsweek and one of the “Most Responsible Companies in France” by Le Point.
Here is a quick look back at our Environment, Social, Governance progress and achievements from the past year.
Environment:
In 2020, we published our sixth annual Sustainability Report using the GRI framework and served as active members of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the CE100 Network. We continue to partner with TerraCycle’s® Loop platform on refillable and reusable products and with PureCycle Technologies, a company that separates color, odor and contaminants from plastic waste feedstock to transform it into ultra-pure recycled polypropylene.
Through our efforts to make our company healthier, safer and more sustainable, we achieved several important milestones. Aptar was recognized for leadership in corporate sustainability by the global environmental non-profit CDP, securing a place on its prestigious ‘A List’ for tackling climate change and Aptar was named a Supplier Engagement leader. We also received Prime status in December 2020 by ISS ESG, one of the world’s leading rating agencies for sustainable investments. Aptar is pleased to join the United Nations (UN) Global Compact, which focuses on universal principles in the areas of human rights, labor, environment and anti-corruption.
Looking at our global facilities, 53% of our sites are now Landfill Free through our grassroots internal certification program that is verified by an independent third party and we are recycling or reusing over 75% of wastes from our operations. We also significantly surpassed our renewable energy target, with approximately 85% of our global electricity consumption now coming from renewable sources. Our science-based targets were validated by the Science Based Targets initiative, setting an emissions reduction goal consistent with requirements to keep global warming well-below 2° Celsius by year 2030.
We remain committed to achieving 10% recycled content by 2025 for our dispensing solutions for the beauty, personal care, home care, food and beverage markets. We are also well positioned to help our customers achieve their own, similar objectives, which, for some, includes packaging that is 100% recyclable or reusable by 2025.
Social:
In 2020, we continued to progress our behavior-based employee safety program and surpassed our targets reducing our Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) by 27% and Lost Time Frequency Rate (LTFR) by 30% from year end 2019.
We are proud to join the Gender and Diversity KPI Alliance, a group of diversity and inclusion advocates and more than 50 corporate leaders, to support the use of key performance indicators
(KPIs) or high-level internal measurements that provide an overview of the diversity of our workforce and allow us to evaluate results, not efforts. To this end, we remain committed to the following diversity goal: by 2025, at least 30% of all Aptar leaders at the Vice President level and above will be women. At year-end 2020, women comprised 37% of the global employee population and 18% at senior leadership levels.
Throughout the year, our employees also supported the communities where we live and work through volunteering and financial support, including donations of PPE, sanitizers, cleaning solution and monetary donations related to COVID-19.
We have teamed with CARE®, a remarkable organization that works around the globe to save lives, defeat poverty and achieve social justice. Through our newly announced, on-going global partnership, Aptar will support CARE’s mission, including education programming, women’s economic empowerment efforts and CARE’s Crisis Response Campaign, by sponsoring the Fast + Fair COVID-19 Vaccine Response Campaign this year. CARE’s mission aligns with our purpose, values and mission to further diversity and inclusion, empower women and to support the communities where we live and work, along with global communities who are the most marginalized and the most in need.
Governance:
Our Board of Directors continues to be comprised of experienced and diverse professionals who come from a wide variety of backgrounds and countries. With this breadth of diversity, our Board can provide experiential oversight that is very relevant to the different end-markets and geographic regions in which we operate.
We believe in fresh perspectives and as of year-end 2020, 50% of our Board had been renewed in the past five years. All of our directors are independent, except for the current CEO, and 40% of our directors are women , with each of our Board Committees being chaired by women. On our Executive Committee, we have leaders who have lived in, and worked in, many countries around the world and women leaders comprise 38% of our executive leadership team. Both the Women on Boards 2020 and the Women’s Forum of New York recognized us for diversity on our Board of Directors.
In 2020, we welcomed Kimberly Chainey as Executive Vice President, Global General Counsel and Secretary.
Looking ahead to 2021:
We look forward to leveraging the many lessons learned over the past year, in order to become a stronger, more confident and focused organization. We will continue to advocate for a more sustainable future and a circular economy where all plastic is reused or recycled.
Guided by our core values and living up to our purpose, we will continue to embrace our diverse and inclusive workplace that welcomes everyone and actively supports the communities where we live and work. Watch the video below to learn more about Aptar’s ESG progress and achievements.
