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Blue Plan: The new Greiner sustainability strategy

23/10/2020 | 2 min read
Theresa Wieser

By adopting the new Blue Plan strategy, Greiner is pursuing a global strategy aimed at delivering a livable future and protecting our environment for the long term. This includes working in a variety of areas at all levels of the company and across all Greiner’s divisions.

Blue Plan is Greiner AG’s new sustainability strategy for building a brighter future. It will help us to embrace sustainability of our own accord, to combat climate change, to achieve a circular business model, and to empower people and employees – making Greiner’s sustainability aspirations a reality.

We have a moral obligation to leave behind a better planet for future generations. We all have to play our part in that process. Blue Plan is our ambitious strategy for achieving a more sustainable future – and we will not rest until we have done so.

Axel Kühner, CEO Greiner AG

Blue Plan focuses on three action areas

Climate action – ensuring that all Greiner locations around the world substantially reduce their emissions, increase their use of renewable energy, and continue to improve their energy efficiency. By taking these steps, the company’s goal is to be climate neutral by 2030.*

Circular business – we are aiming to reduce Greiner products’ environmental impact to a minimum by 2030 by ensuring sustainable product design and optimal use of resources – and become a fully circular business in the process.

People – the key to achieving a sustainable future. To empower its employees, Greiner is stepping up investments in training and professional development, occupational health and safety, and diversity.

Climate neutrality is the destination. Blue Plan is our roadmap.

Greiner has been hard at work on sustainability issues since 2015, when it began by conducting a comprehensive materiality assessment. The results ultimately informed the group-wide Plastics for Life strategy in 2016. In 2017, a dedicated sustainability department was set up at Greiner AG’s headquarters. The first item on the agenda was to establish the infrastructure for moving the business and its management in a sustainable direction. Then, in 2019, Greiner released its first ever sustainability report, which set out clearly defined goals for 2025 and 2030. The Blue Plan strategy will now seamlessly follow on from this – and is intended to pave the way for building an even more sustainable business going forward. To make this happen, Greiner is consistently pursuing its own goal of climate neutrality* by 2030, in addition to following market trends and requirements.

Blue Plan is our strategy for a brighter future.

Blue Plan covers all Greiner divisions around the world and focuses on three major issues: climate action, creating a circular business, and people. Three things are crucial to achieving progress in these areas – having the courage to question longstanding assumptions, providing the ideal environment to foster innovation, and being fully prepared to change the way we do things and reshape the status quo. In particular, this applies to new circular business models, sustainable product design, and resource consumption throughout the company.

Ensuring that resources are recycled and recirculated will be our great challenge for the decade ahead. We will tackle this challenge by doing even more as a company to create sustainable product designs. As we pursue the Blue Plan strategy at Greiner Packaging as well, our goal is to keep minimizing the environmental impact of our products and to optimize resource use during the production process. To this end, we are pursuing our own approach to building a circular business under the umbrella of our division-specific circular economy strategy.

Manfred Stanek, CEO Greiner Packaging

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