OUR VISION
Innovation & Transformation
At O-I, our vision is to be the most innovative, sustainable, and chosen supplier of brand-building packaging solutions. While we believe glass packaging is already the most sustainable packaging solution, sustainability at O-I is about more than what we make. It is also about how we make it. It is about the interconnected ecosystem that involves our suppliers, our customers, our people, and the communities where we operate. It is about achieving balance between our operations and the products we make with the current and future needs of our communities, the planet, and our collective prosperity. At O-I, the journey to this balance—sustainability—is grounded in resilience, innovation, and the ever-present challenge to transform what we do.
Message From the CEO & CSO
For more than 100 years, O-I has innovated and transformed how glass packaging is made and sold—starting with Michael Owens’s invention of the machine that enabled mass production of glass containers. Innovation is in our DNA and we continue to reimagine how we will sustainably evolve every aspect of our business, from our glass-making technology and processes to our customer approach and how we support our people and communities. Reducing, reusing, and recycling are necessary to a sustainable future but alone are not sufficient to get the job done. True sustainability depends on continuously transforming everything from the fuels, processes, and technologies we use to the relationships we have with our suppliers, customers, communities, and our nearly 25,000 employees.
In this year’s report on our 2021 results, we detail the transformative steps forward in our processes, products, and our interconnected relationships with our stakeholders. The progress we have made along our sustainability journey goes beyond balancing products and processes—it also involves our work to fully integrate sustainability into how we govern and resource our business.
Our holistic, systems-based approach to addressing sustainability has resulted in progress for our operations: increasing energy efficiency, upgrading our furnaces with gas-oxygen technology, advancing light–weighting of our products, creating more resilient supply chains, and partnering with our stakeholders. The progress shared in this report is a result of continuous engagement with our customers, suppliers, employees, and communities to align our sustainable focus with the evolving needs of an ever-changing ecosystem. This work, and more, is moving us and our communities toward a truly circular economy for packaging that leverages the infinite recyclability of glass.
We understand that responsible production for packaging, combined with a trusted, ethical approach to business is important to our customers, and their customers. We are proud to share our governance and oversight structure that reinforces our high standards of conduct in everything we do. And our holistic approach to sustainability, combined with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, are the foundation of this trust and guide us in our approach to sustainability.
Our success in advancing our sustainable journey has been the result of maintaining this focus, which has led to gains and efficiencies that have benefited our business and environmental footprint. We have prioritized increasing renewable electricity. By year-end 2021, we have purchased renewable electricity certificates covering 27% of our global electricity consumption—against a goal of 40% by 2030. We also have accelerated innovative projects for energy-efficient melting, which are transforming our manufacturing systems to be the best-in-class and helping accelerate the percentage of recycled glass used in our processes. These efforts, and others, have lowered our absolute emissions 13.5% against our 2017 baseline. We look forward to hitting our interim 2025 goal of a 10% reduction.
The pages of the report contain insights on our climate-change roadmap and how our strategic pillars—increased cullet usage, transformative technology, renewable electricity, and greater energy efficiency—will accelerate our progress while we engineer and innovate to use lower-carbon fuels as they become commercially available. We will share the ways we are reimagining and reinventing the business model for glass packaging to create a future where the innate circularity of glass meets O-I’s disruptive MAGMA melting technology and other innovations to change how glass is made and sold.
At O-I, we believe glass is the perfect material for sustainably protecting and showcasing the food and beverage products that are part of our daily lives. We also understand that the sustainability of any product depends on the sustainability of the processes and relationships the organization uses to produce it. True sustainability is not binary, a single-variable evaluation, or an end point. It is about a continuous quest to find and maintain the delicate balance that must exist among an organization and its products and the competing needs and outputs of other people, organizations, and the planet. Our commitment to transform how we manufacture glass is an essential component in our quest to achieve this big-picture balance that is sustainability.
As we strive to be the most innovative, sustainable, and chosen supplier of brand-building packaging solutions, we are building a strong, resilient organization designed for the future. Glass has endured the test of time for millennia, yet it has never been so modern and relevant. We are proud of our sustainable advancements and our 25,000 passionate glassmakers that make us more sustainable each day. We hope you are inspired by our progress and join us in celebrating the International Year of Glass.
Andres A. Lopez (He/Him)
Chief Executive Officer
Randolph L. Burns (He/Him)
Chief Sustainability & Corporate Affairs Officer
