Message From Mike

Message From Mike

Consumers touch Pactiv Evergreen products five billion times each week. Whether they cook breakfast for their families, get coffee at the drive-thru or go to the cafeteria with colleagues, they most likely use one of our products every day. For us, Packaging a Better Future means recognizing these moments as opportunities to deliver innovation, safety and performance, while knowing we can make a difference for the planet, for our people and for the communities in which we live and work.

Packaging a Better Future means opportunities to deliver innovation and performance, knowing we can make a difference.

Delivering sustainable products cannot happen without sustainable operations.

It all starts with the materials we procure to make the products consumers use. When we published our first sustainability report in 2020, we announced a bold goal that, by 2030, 100% of our net revenues would come from products made from recyclable, recycled or renewable materials. I am proud to share that we achieved 66% of that goal in 2022, and our teams are hard at work bridging the remaining gap. That goal was only the first in a series of environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives under our new Social Responsibility Key Strategic Initiative, designed to deliver on our purpose of Packaging a Better Future while creating long-term value for all stakeholders. You’ll read more about these efforts throughout this report, but let me share a few highlights.

In support of customers’ expanding demand for sustainable solutions, we’ve obtained certifications for applicable facilities or products. For example, all of our facilities that convert virgin fiber products now hold chain of custody certifications, following the path from the forest through the supply chain.

And a growing number of our facilities that produce our plastic products have been certified by International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) as ISCC PLUS, for their use of post-consumer recycled and bio-based content derived from chemical recycling technologies. Additionally, we launched dozens of new third-party certified compostable products in 2022.

We know firsthand that delivering innovative, sustainable products at the scale that we envision cannot happen without sustainable operations. The last few years were truly transformative for Pactiv Evergreen. We have been systematically embedding sustainability across our network. Improved sustainability data management allowed us to undertake a company-wide waste review and share new water management best practices. All our plastics converting facilities have now taken the Operation Clean Sweep pledge (or its equivalent in Mexico and Canada), setting up processes to keep plastic pellets out of the environment. Crucially, our Pactiv Evergreen Production System (PEPS) is supporting these changes thanks to its structured approach and its Sustainability Champions, our field-based network of team members dedicated to sustainability.

This transformation gave us the confidence, in July 2022, to commit to set near- and long-term company-wide emission reductions in line with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). We also completed a climate-related risk and opportunity analysis and published our findings in our Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) report.

None of these commitments could have happened without dedicated team members. We spent a great deal of time improving how we celebrate our employees and provide them with the support they need. In addition to revamping our benefits and incentive programs, we expanded our paid time off policy and launched a tuition assistance program and several career development initiatives. And, we are partnering with organizations to help us strengthen diversity, equity and inclusion at all levels of the company. In 2022, we also held our first Give Back Month of Action. Just under 100,000 pounds of food was donated to food pantries across North America and thousands of employee volunteer hours were spent bringing our values to the communities where we live and operate.

To be more resilient and focused, and to continue to serve our customers’ needs and market demands, we acquired one of the market leaders in sustainable packaging, Fabri-Kal; divested noncore businesses outside of North America; and recently made the very difficult decision to close two of our facilities and explore strategic options for two additional facilities. Ultimately, this led to the restructuring of our legacy business units resulting in the creation of the "Food and Beverage Merchandising" business unit. Change is not easy — all these steps were taken with considerable thought for our employees, customers, shareholders and communities, while continuing to expand our ESG commitments and initiatives. As we continue to make great strides toward our current goals and embedding sustainability throughout our business, I’m proud to share more about our progress in this report and am thankful for all the ways our employees are Packaging a Better Future every day.

Mike King Signature

Mike King
President and Chief Executive Officer of Pactiv Evergreen