Why Water Matters
As a global manufacturing company, Greif has a responsibility to minimize our water use and improve water quality, particularly in our most water intensive operations. Responsible water management reduces our demand for water as water scarcity and water costs are rising and ensures that water discharge from our facilities is treated and safe to protect the health of the communities in which we operate. Our water management practices simultaneously achieve these aims while creating operational efficiencies and minimizing regulatory risk.
Styring
Only 1%
total water consumed in regions with high water baseline stress
Vores indsats for vandkvalitet har allerede gjort det muligt for os at nå vores mål om at reducere udledningen på 10% inden 2025.
Greif monitors Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to ensure proper treatment of our wastewater. If a treatment incident occurs, the facility manager would observe a change to these KPIs, which initiates an investigation to determine the root cause and resolve the problem. When necessary, Greif engages third-party experts to support our investigations. For example, in 2020 Greif’s Tama mill experienced high biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) and nitrogen concentrations. Greif contracted with a third party to conduct a site inspection and recommend corrective actions. Based on their recommendations, we increased nutrient addition, instituted improved analytical testing to monitor nutrient levels and introduced chemical oxygen demand (COD) testing to receive faster feedback on potential issues.
While Greif’s water impact is predominately in our PPS operations, we take steps to curb water use across all our operations, particularly in water-stressed regions in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. In these facilities, and across all our operations, we reduce water pressure where it is higher than needed, replace leaky valves and collect and use rainwater when possible. Our Global Industrial Packaging facility in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia implemented many such measures in an effort to reduce and recycle their wastewater, ultimately resulting in a 32 percent reduction in waste to landfill from their facility. Please see our Spild page for more information on their achievement.
In 2021, we will develop standard environmental data dashboards across our mills to better understand and manage water and effluent, as well as energy data, and continue working to identify water efficiency opportunities.
Mål og fremskridt
In 2017, Greif announced a 2020 goal of 10 percent reduction in kilograms of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) per metric ton of production, from a 2014 baseline of 1.47, at legacy Greif mills. Our 2017 materiality process led to the creation of new 2025 goals and restating our BOD goal as a 2025 goal. Additionally, in 2021, we plan to create 2030 goals and targets in line with the American Forest and Paper Association.
In 2018, we reevaluated our historical water use and BOD data to confirm our baseline and assumptions to support continual improvement related to water. Through this process, we restated our 2014 BOD baseline to 1.40.
2025 Goal: Reduce BOD discharged in kilograms by 10 percent per metric ton of combined production from the Riverville and Massillon mills using the 2014 restated baseline by the end of fiscal year 2025.
Progress: Since 2017, we have reduced BOD per metric ton of production by 71.8 percent in our legacy Greif containerboard mills. Our significant progress against our BOD goal was enabled by the installation of a wastewater treatment facility at our Massillon mill. Completed in July 2017, the project led to modest improvements in 2017 and far surpassed expectations in 2018. These benefits continued to be realized in 2020.
In 2021, we will continue to track our progress in reducing BOD while controlling specific water use in our mills and reevaluate our goals to include both our legacy Greif mills and Caraustar mills that are now part of our organization. Additionally, in 2021, we will announce new water reduction targets for our mills.
Performance Data
WATER*
|
Regnskabsåret 2016 |
Regnskabsåret 2017 |
Regnskabsåret 2018 |
Regnskabsåret 2019 |
Regnskabsåret 2020 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Vandudtag (tusindvis af kubikmeter)* |
8,420.2 |
9,666.3 |
9,360.8 |
13,864.4 |
12,936.6 |
Overfladevand |
- |
9,242.7 |
8,630.0 |
10,266.8 |
10,132.0 |
Grundvand |
- |
423.6 |
730.7 |
3,597.6 |
2,804.6 |
Regnvand |
- | - | - | - | - |
Spildevand |
- | - | - | - | - |
Kommunalt vand† |
- | - | - | - | - |
Spildevandsudledning (tusindvis af kubikmeter)** |
7,961.4 |
8,983.2 |
9,316.2 |
12,403.92 |
11,935.1 |
James-floden |
- |
8,788.8 |
8,907.1 |
7,949.5 |
8,375.0 |
Byen Massillon |
- |
191.6 |
407.1 |
424.0 |
355.8 |
Tuscarawas-floden |
- |
2.8 |
2.0 |
2.5 |
8.8 |
Sweetwater Creek^ |
- |
- |
- |
0.0 |
0.0 |
Cobb County spildevandsanlæg^ |
- |
- |
- |
844.9 |
855.0 |
Cincinnatis kloakeringsdistrikt |
- |
- |
- |
37.6 |
40.6 |
Milwaukee Metropolitan-kloakeringsdistrikt^^ |
- |
- |
- |
349.0 |
335.9 |
Los Angeles County Sanitetsdistrikt WWTF^^ |
- |
- |
- |
196.8 |
189.1 |
Three Mile Creek^ |
- |
- |
- |
0.0 |
- |
Baltimores spildevandsanlæg** |
- |
- |
- |
0.0 |
6.1 |
West Branch Paw Paw Creek** |
- |
- |
- |
697.1 |
581.4 |
San Jose-Santa Clara regionale spildevandsanlæg^^ |
- |
- |
- |
288.1 |
334.2 |
Tacoma Central spildevandsanlæg^^ |
- |
- |
- |
6.9 |
8.5 |
Byen Fitchburg Renteanlæg^ |
- |
- |
- |
322.6 |
309.0 |
Iowa-floden** |
- |
- |
- |
291.8 |
364.9 |
Kirsebærsøen** |
- |
- |
- |
597.8 |
550.4 |
Iowas biflod** |
- |
- |
- |
58.0 |
78.6 |
Biokemisk iltforbrug (tusindvis af kg) |
1,050.4 |
890.4 |
204.2 |
3,508.3 |
3,457.1 |
Totalt suspenderet stof (kg) |
546,857 |
465,098 |
349,003 |
1,224,442 |
1,045,928 |
Fosfor (kg) |
5,728 |
4,991 |
6,617 | 4,708 | 4,445 |
Produktion (MT) |
665,000 |
690,000 |
713,336 |
1,729,062 |
1,661,228 |
Forbrugshastighed (m3/MT) |
12.7 |
14.0 |
13.1 |
8.02 |
7.79 |
Noter:
- Data fra 2015 til 2018 stammer fra Greif's to papirfabrikker, hvoraf den ene ligger i Riverville, Virginia, og den anden i Massillon, Ohio. Historisk set tegnede disse to papirfabrikker sig for mere end 90% af Greif's globale vandfodaftryk. De bruger henholdsvis James River og vandbrønde på stedet. Data fra 2019 omfatter 12 tidligere Caraustar-fabrikker, der blev opkøbt og integreret i 2019. Alle data fra 2019 er helårsdata. Kvaliteten af spildevand, der udledes fra vores fabrikker, opfylder tilladelseskravene. Intet udledt vand blev brugt af en anden organisation. WWTP = Spildevandsrensningsanlæg.
- Data for regnskabsåret 2019 inkluderer Mobile Wright Smith spildevandsanlæg, som blev lukket ned i 2020 og er blevet omregnet for korrekt at tage højde for udledningen fra West Branch Paw Paw Creek i regnskabsåret 2019.
**Behandlet med primær klaring, sekundær klaring og beluftning før direkte udledning
^ Behandlet med spildevandsforbehandling inklusive fjernelse af opløselig BOD
^^ Behandlet med spildevandsforbehandling kun med faste stoffer.
† Greif sporer i øjeblikket ikke udtag af kommunalt vand.
Vandforbrug i regioner med høj eller ekstremt høj baseline vandbelastning* |
Regnskabsåret 2020 |
---|---|
Vandudtag (tusindvis af kubikmeter) |
170.4 |
Procentdel af samlet vandudtag |
1% |
Vandforbrug (tusindvis af kubikmeter) |
162.7 |
Procentdel af det samlede vandforbrug |
1% |
Improving Our Wastewater
In 2017, Greif’s Massillon, Ohio mill completed construction of a water treatment facility to significantly reduce the biological oxygen demand (BOD) of the plant’s discharge water before being returned to the municipal treatment plant. High BOD levels promote bacteria growth, release odors and must be controlled using chemicals. Since installing the treatment facility, we reduced BOD discharged to the municipal system by over 96 percent, contributing to our 2025 BOD reduction goal. This also eliminated several chemicals that were previously needed to control bacteria.

Water Reduction at Our Baltimore, Ohio Mill
In 2020, Greif’s Baltimore, Ohio mill transitioned from direct discharge of treated wastewater to a local creek to discharging pretreated wastewater to a local water treatment facility that uses a state-of-the-art membrane treatment system to further treat water. This shift both reduced overall water discharge and supported returning cleaner water to the community. Greif engaged with local and state governments over the course of multiple years to design and approve the project, which was approved in 2019 and completed in October 2020. The project will reduce water consumption by 550,000 m3 per year. The community benefits from a cleaner surface water since several tons per year of biological oxygen demand and total suspended solids were also removed from the local creeks because of this transition.

BÆREDYGTIGHEDSHØJDEPUNKTER
Only 1%
Total water consumed in regions with high water baseline stress
Vores indsats for vandkvalitet har allerede gjort det muligt for os at nå vores mål om at reducere udledningen på 10% inden 2025.