Novelis receives Keep America Beautiful award

Keep America Beautiful, Inc. has chosen Novelis Inc. as its 2009 Vision for America Award honoree. Keep America Beautiful recognized and honored Novelis for the corporation’s leadership in environmental issues, employee volunteerism, and for its outstanding efforts to promote recycling in America and worldwide.

The Vision for America Award is presented annually to distinguished leaders of honored corporations whose personal and corporate commitment have significantly enhanced civic, environmental and social stewardship throughout the United States.

“Through its global recycling programs, Novelis has demonstrated its commitment to increasing access to recycling, and advancing the public’s awareness of recycling of aluminum and of all materials,” said Keep America Beautiful president and CEO Matthew M. McKenna.

Another factor in KAB’s selection of Novelis was the company’s commitment to volunteerism. To encourage and assist employees to volunteer their time in support of community organizations as individuals and through team-based projects, Novelis identifies and organizes volunteer opportunities within each of its communities.

Beyond recycling and volunteerism, Novelis is committed to reducing its energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Beginning in 2005, Novelis established a set of environmental sustainability objectives focused on three annual measures:

• Reduce landfill waste generation by six percent per year.
• Improve energy efficiency by two percent per year.
• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by two percent per year.

As part of these commitments, which extend through 2012, every Novelis facility is mandated to develop an energy-saving initiative each year.

Since 2006, Novelis has supported federal greenhouse gas reduction and energy efficiency initiatives as a Climate Leaders Partner with the EPA. Through this industry-government partnership, Novelis further developed an emissions inventory monitoring plan to measure and validate its progress against its stated goals. A dozen Novelis facilities in the United States and Canada participate in this program, four of which have recycling operations.

Through its R&D and continuous improvement teams, Novelis works with its customers to find ways to reduce the amount of aluminum that goes into its products, maximize recycling and increase recycled content. For example, improvements in the manufacturing process allow for “downgauging,” or using a thinner sheet of aluminum.

The amount of aluminum required to produce a beverage can shrank almost 30 percent from 1980 to 2000 while maintaining the necessary level of durability.