In July, Mark Burgess, President & CEO of Mauser Packaging Solutions, announced on behalf of the Executive Leadership team a new corporate-wide initiative aimed at enhancing efforts in three key areas: Innovation, Sustainability, and Post Consumer Resin (PCR).
The Sustainability Steering Committee, led by Rick Haskins, NAIP Vice President of Research, Development, and Commercialization, is composed of six core members from all three business units and supported by SLR Consulting, which has been contracted to facilitate our next sustainability report. This steering committee will collaborate with all departments within the organization (e.g., operations, procurement, EH&S, legal and compliance, finance, etc.) to develop and implement Mauser’s global sustainability strategy. They will also ensure that Mauser meets the evolving sustainability-related regulatory reporting requirements.
We recently spoke with Rick Haskins about the creation of this team and what the business can anticipate from their efforts in the near future.
Global Communications (GC): What is the role of the Sustainability Team?
Rick Haskins (RH): We are a lean team with an ambitious long-term vision for MPS’s sustainability, journey. One of the primary goals of the sustainability team is to more effectively communicate our company’s sustainability targets, performance and initiatives to all stakeholders, including employees, job candidates, customers, communities and investors. Additionally, we are focused on improving our score with EcoVadis which is one of the most widely used global sustainability assessment platforms.
GC: What does the Sustainability team hope to achieve in its infancy?
RH: Over the next six months, our focus will be bringing our tagline ‘Redefining Sustainability’ to life by providing all employees, from the plant floor to the Executive Leadership Team, with a solid understanding of crucial sustainability terminology and topics.
This education will allow Mauser to
- raise internal awareness of sustainability;
- engage effectively with sustainably minded customers;
- integrate sustainability initiatives into our global strategy to ensure long-term success in a market rapidly evolving around sustainability.
What is EcoVadis?
EcoVadis is the most widely used sustainability assessment platform globally. The EcoVadis sustainability assessment methodology is an evaluation of how well a company has integrated the principles of Sustainability/CSR (corporate social responsibility) into their business and management system. These principles are derived from international sustainability standards, including the Global Reporting Initiative, the United Nations Global Impact, and the ISO 26000.
Mauser leverages EcoVadis as our sole sustainability assessment platform to share our assessment scorecards with customers and partners upon request, simultaneously providing a benchmark against other companies’ sustainability performance.
Learn more at ecovadis.com.
GC: What can we expect from the Sustainability team in the short and long term?
RH: We are currently concentrating on three key areas.
First, we want to hear from Mauser employees. To advance our sustainability efforts, we need a clearer picture of our current activities at both the plant and corporate levels. This understanding will help us set goals and objectives for our future global strategy.
Second, we’re collaborating with IT to create a Sustainability page on CONNECT to serve as the “go to” place for “all things” sustainability. This functional hub will include a glossary covering key sustainability terminology, employee sustainability training courses and a best-practices area, where we would like to encourage our employees to share sustainable practices already implemented at the individual plant level.
Finally, we’re diligently collecting data and compiling our 2023 Sustainability Report, which will be published in early 2025. This report will communicate Mauser’s global sustainability goals and be formatted to comply with industry accepted reporting frameworks (e.g., Global Reporting Initiative - GRI, Sustainability Accounting Standards Board - SASB, etc.). In the meantime, if you’re curious about the content of a formal sustainability report and what it is about, visit the True Sustainability page on mauserpackagingsolutions.com to view our 2021 Sustainability Report.
GC: What does this team expect from our employees, and how can employees contribute to supporting the team’s efforts?
RH: It’s simple. We’re currently encouraging employees to integrate sustainability into our company culture by learning about sustainability, celebrating achievements, sharing success stories, and making sustainability a core value.
GC: Thank you for speaking with us. We look forward to seeing and sharing the progress your team makes!