Appleton Coated, a papermaker based in Combined Locks since 1889, has been named a “Green Professional” by the Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council.
This designation was made under the council’s Green Masters Program, which recognizes businesses for improving sustainability. Appleton Coated is one of only seven companies in the state to have been recognized by the program for six or more years.
“We work toward improving our impact on the environment; our goal is to make it easy for customers to choose environmentally friendly products,” said Jenni Birkholz, marketing and communications director for Appleton Coated. “We try to meet regulations and decrease contribution to landfills.”
Tom Eggert is the executive director for the Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council, a group of state businesses and organizations pursuing sustainable practices. He says companies have to score well in each of the nine areas, “they can’t just be doing environmental stuff.”
“We don’t evaluate products, just the company,” Eggert said. “We pass no judgment on what they’re doing, just how they do it.”
Birkholz says the effort to move toward more sustainable business practices came about 10 years ago, when the company started to look at different ways to use energy more efficiently.
She said Appleton Coated’s uncoated paper usually has a minimum of 30 percent recycled fiber, while the coated papers are made with 10 percent recycled fiber. It can, however, go up to 100 percent for certain products, she said.
“It’s our goal to be as environmentally responsible as possible and help our customers be as environmentally responsible as possible,” Birkholz said.
The program opens up in the middle of January each year, and runs to the end of October. Companies apply online, and are evaluated in nine major areas of sustainability: waste, water, carbon and energy, workforce, community, education, governance, transportation, and supply chain management.
To qualify for the “Green Professionals” designation, companies must score in the top 20 percent of all applicants for that year. And Eggert says the results of the assessment have shown steady progress in past years.
“The minimum score to qualify has gone up; the average score of companies have gone up every year,” Eggert said. “They are certainly scoring more points in the system we have created that seeks to evaluate sustainability performance.”
He says this suggests companies are taking sustainability more seriously, at least in the social responsibility categories like community and education.
“We are seeing companies becoming more active in the social sustainability space as companies take on more responsibility for the societies they find themselves in,” Eggert said. “Appleton Coated has a history of sustainability leadership; they’re doing some amazing things and pushing the envelope.”
–By Alex Moe
WisBusiness.com
