Sustainability: Operations

At Hood Packaging Corporation our operations work proactively to achieve continuous improvement in such areas as reducing energy usage, cutting greenhouse gas emissions, eliminating excess packaging, reusing internal scrap, and eliminating landfill waste.

Energy usage and CO2 Emissions
Over the past decade, Hood Packaging Corporation has invested over $60 million dollars in new and more energy efficient production equipment. This has resulted in a significant decrease over the past ten years in the amount of energy consumer per unit of packaging. Carbon emissions per unit produced have seen a similar reduction.

Additionally, most Hood Packaging Corporation plants have installed new energy efficient lighting. This also lowers our carbon footprint.

Reducing Packaging
Hood Packaging Corporation in an industry leader in eliminating unnecessary packaging. We have utilized advances in paper technology to radically reduce both the number and weight of paper plies in our multiwall bags. Whereas bags of three and four plies were common in our industry a decade ago, thanks in part to Hood Packaging Corporation’s leadership, multiwall bags now typically use two to three plies of paper, improving product to package ratios, cutting production and transportation energy costs, slashing greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing packaging waste.

We have even introduced our industry leading line of  single ply bags, which are made from just one ply of paper. Our single ply bags offer customers a package that is strong, lightweight, made from renewable materials, and completely recyclable.

We have also assumed a leadership role in our plastic plants. Via the use of improved resins and technically sophisticated formulations, we have been able to significantly reduce the gauge (thickness) of the films we use in packaging, saving energy costs, reducing carbon emissions, and cutting our usage of fossil fuels.

Another important Hood Packaging Corporation sustainable initiative is moving customers from energy consuming carton box packaging for their packaging to more energy efficient recyclable shrink wrap.

Reusing Internal Scrap and Eliminating Landfill Waste
Packaging waste is a significant contributor municipal landfills.  At Hood Packaging Corporation, we are determined to make a contribution to solving this problem. Accordingly, it is Hood Packaging Corporation’s policy to re-use all paper scrap produced in our plants, as well as all shipping materials we receive. In our plastic plants we are continually improving our re-use percentage, which now exceeds 80% of all the waste we generate.

In both our paper and plastic plants, printing inks are produced and re-ground internally. This means that excess and waste inks are continually re-used, virtually eliminating internal waste inks.