Proving Yourself in a Sustainable World

When it comes to operating sustainably, several phrases come to mind: practice what you preach; don't ask anyone to do what you wouldn't do yourself; put your money where your mouth is; and more. Take a look at Wal-Mart. It sought to be a leader in sustainability and came up with its own scorecard and basically said, "Fine, to be sustainable, we need less packaging." When an organization with that kind of clout makes a decision to go in a direction, it's almost impossible not to follow its lead.

This attitude has made sustainability the real deal. "When you have the Coke's and Pepsi's of the world making some of the statements they're making about package reduction, waste reduction, water reduction, and energy reduction; when you've got Wal-Mart doing a packaging scorecard calling for year-on-year 5-10 percent material reduction out of their packaging with an ultimate goal to not even have packaging, it's just real," comments Dan Muenzer, vice president of marketing, Spear.

Spear is one company that takes sustainability seriously, and has emerged as a recognized sustainability leader in the pressure-sensitive (p-s) label market.

Sustainable without knowing it

Spear was a pioneer of the "no label look" in the 1980s through a partnership with Proctor & Gamble. Over time, the company became "intimately involved with developing raw materials—specifically films that were clear, less costly, and got very involved with the manufacturing process," says Rick Spear, president and CEO of Spear.

In the early 1990s, the company expanded the technology by both developing thinner films that cost less, and developing rotary machines for application that could operate at about 250-300 bottles/minute. The first stop for this technology for the beverage sector was with the glass industry and a new product launch—Clearly Canadian Sparkling Water. By developing the thinner, lower cost films, Spear was already beginning to operate in a more sustainable manner, though, at the time, sustainability was not something many, if any, companies were quantifying.

Sustainable history

Spear has been involved with general environmental programs going back 10 years when it began working with its suppliers and outside sources to develop recycling programs. According to Rick Spear, his appreciation of the environment in his personal life overlapped into his corporate life. "I've always been a nature enthusiast," says Spear. "I love the outdoors and appreciate it quite a bit. So there's always been an appreciation on a personal level which obviously overlaps into the corporate arena."

Spear asserts that it was about four years ago that the company's customers began asking questions about sustainability and environmental friendliness. He states that awareness of how important sustaining the environment is has grown substantially.

Spear knew that programs the company had developed were moving in the right direction, but it wasn't until about two years ago that the company began measureing the results. "And that was an astonishing event," he exclaims. "I mean, it really opened our eyes. It became black and white. It was a lot easier to manage, to get people to buy into the entire program because they could see the results by measuring the changes." As a result, Spear was able to set specific targets and steer focus in the proper direction. "It's really made a big change in the last 24 to 30 months, being able to measure the improvements and see the success of the programs," asserts Spear.

A tandem approach

Spear has taken a two-tiered approach to environmental leadership by implementing internal and external programs. "We created a brand within Spear called SpearEARTH," says Muenzer. "It's a very visible program where sustainability and environmental leadership aren't just one person's objective—it's a corporate objective that's front and center."

SpearEARTH represents Spear's global corporate program that addresses source reduction, recycling, eco-friendly materials, processing, supply chain involvement, and external validation. It comprises a team of employees with cross-functional representation that includes all of Spear's operations from all its facilities: the director of quality, the director of Lean Six Sigma, the director of marketing, and representatives from different areas of responsibility in each plant. "And what we do," says Muenzer, "is share best practices. We focus on products, processes, recycling, etc. Some of them are internal and some of them are external. We work with the entire supply chain. We take it to our suppliers and our customers. So, it is literally a cradle-to-cradle or cradle-to-grave approach."

Spear's biggest claim to fame, according to Muenzer is its thin film leadership. "Our standard materials are 20 percent thinner than the industry standard for our category," he says. For example, a typical beverage label is 2-mil BOPP on a 1-1.5-mil PET liner with a specific level of adhesive. "Our standard material is 1.6 mil on a 0.9-mil liner. Obviously, you're using a lot less material. We're eliminating tens of millions of pounds of potential landfill."

The second benefit is in freight shipping. "Because you're getting more labels on a roll, more rolls in a box, more labels on a pallet, and more labels on a truck, we were able to wipe out 300 full truck loads of material shipments in and out of Spear facilities."

Freight, says Muenzer, is Spear's greatest impact on the environment from a carbon footprint standpoint. "The actual operations of a label converter have a minimal impact on the environment. It's the freight. So when you can eliminate truckloads, that's where you're really making a difference—that's thin film."

Liner recycling is another area in which Spear is a leader. "We have developed liner recycling programs for all our major customers and we've been on the front side of that," Muenzer claims. "We don't actually recycle the liner ourselves, but we have established relationships with firms that do the recycling. We'll go in and jointly audit the facilities." Muenzer states that the amount of Spear's liner at its customers' facilities being recycled is approaching 80 percent. "And, as you can imagine, that's our number one waste by-product as a pressure-sensitive label printer," he says. "So that again is tens of millions of tons of material being eliminated from landfill."

Spear also has a proprietary PET product that is completely recyclable for the PET bottle market. "Traditionally, pressure sensitive is a contaminant for PET bottles, so we developed a product that is completely recyclable in that waste stream," says Muenzer. The company also recaptures 3.5 million pounds of solvent per year via solvent recovery systems. It supplies 95 percent of its solvent needs by re-using the reclaimed solvents.

Energy converting

Thinner film, recycled liner—what's left? The matrix. At Spear, matrix represents 85 percent of its waste. According to Muenzer, finding productive uses for matrix is paramount. "We have partnered with a variety of waste energy manufacturers—the guys that basically take scrap and turn it into biofuel pellets that go to energy plants to burn as clean fuel," he says. While not 100 percent of Spear's matrix is currently recycled, the company anticipates that during the second quarter of this year, 50 percent of its matrix will be recycled into waste energy pellets.

Tying together six sites

Spear recently invested in a video bridge to host its own video conferences, which the company lives and dies by, according to Muenzer. With six sites across three continents, that means a lot of saved airfare. "What we've done is we've bought a lot of external remote cameras and offered them to our customers so we can host our own remote video conferencing and hopefully eliminate as much air travel as possible for both our customers and ourselves," he says. The investment has allowed Spear to do approvals via the video bridge where the customer doesn't have to come to Spear.

Measured results

Spear quantifies its programs via lean six sigma and works with external companies to validate what it does. In the UK, it works with the Carbon Trust and in the U.S. the Carbon Disclosure Project to convert all of its numbers back into tons of CO2. It also uses greenhouse gas protocol standards to determine carbon footprint. "So at the end of the day, through all of our programs, we have been able to eliminate, on an annual basis, more than 10 million tons of waste from the landfill," asserts Muenzer. "And right now, we're [eliminating], on an annual basis, a little more than 8,200 tons of CO2 emissions.

"When we started to measure," he continues," that's when we started to pick up steam. I would strongly encourage [printers] to measure the results of their efforts."

TLMI award

Spear received TLMI's "Best Practices in Environmental Leadership" award at the 2009 TLMI Annual Meeting. The award recognizes Spear for reducing its carbon footprint in every aspect of its business. TLMI's environmental awards have six categories including solid waste reduction, energy reduction, recycling projects, waste recovery, clean processing, and education. "When we looked at the actual award and how to apply, we realized that we have stuff that covers all six of those areas," says Muenzer. "So we actually submitted a plethora of items to justify the award."

Spear is also in the process of certifying all its plants to ISO 14001, the environmental standard for ISO, as well as working to achieve TLMI LIFE (Label Initiative For the Environment) certification.

Reaching critical mass

Sustainability is here to stay. A few years ago, some may have wondered if it would ever establish the foothold it has across so many industries. A big part of the change is the heightened level of awareness worldwide. "Critical mass is an important ingredient," says Spear. "A few years ago it was a lot harder to get some of our partners to buy into the program because the volumes were so low. The more the industry picks up on sustainability, the more companies get involved with it, I think the easier it will be to be successful."

Back that up with hard data, and it's tough to argue with the benefits. "Generally you can recycle four times as much tonnage as the weight of the liner," adds Muenzer. "So if they have a million pounds of liner over a year, chances are you're going to find another four million pounds of other plastic scrap. Whether it be shrink wrap, strapping, banding or cores, it becomes a big deal." pP