Big Picture
Sustainability actions and goals differ for all businesses. The direction of change does not. The direction for organizational actions is often guided by the Sustainable Development Goals.
In 2015; the United Nations (UN) announced 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) for all member nations to strive to achieve by 2030. The SDGs “provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet now and into the future.”
Healthy Planet
(SDGs #13, #14, #15)
Healthy People
(SDGs #3)
Healthy Company
(SDGs #8, #9, #12)
Our vision alignment with the SDGs is crucial to a better future.
Traco Philosophy:
At Traco, our long-term sustainability efforts are geared around the SDG goals that apply most directly to our business. Our efforts also tie directly to our history.
The current president Owen Power believes strongly in the strength of aspirational goals and rewarding seen and unseen actions that makes working at Traco and the surrounding community a better place.
Saying “yes” to a challenge and aiming high for aspirational goals to make the workplace and community better both combine to define Traco’s sustainability mindset and actions.
We have also found that sustainability requires collaboration. There is not one path to sustainability and there is not a perfect path. SDG #17 (Partnerships) speaks to working together.
If you have sustainability goals, please reach out to us. We would like to partner with suppliers and customers to maximize our collective impact. We will continue to share sustainability information on our site, in blog posts and in marketing materials.
Our direction of change is tethered to the SDGs. Our company’s authentic actions are aimed to have a simultaneous positive effect on the environment, people, and the business.
Recyclable Pouches
Pouches often have a smaller environmental impact in viewing a package’s lifecycle when compared to alternatives. Pouches typically offer lower emissions in creating the package, elongate product shelf-life and have less transport emissions due to the lighter weight. The problem for pouches comes at end of life. Pouches are often made of disparate materials that follow varying waste streams. By example, plastic laminated to foil to create a pouch deems the package unrecyclable by traditional means as plastic and metalized foil have two different paths to recyclability. Traco now offers a pouch material alternative that allows some applications to use a single material that is recyclable at the end of life. Manufacturing and marketing of the pouch option will be a focus in 2023.
Reduce Waste
Reduce is often the first step to move in a more sustainable direction. Waste reduction initiatives in the production process has a triple positive effect: reduces the amount of material needed to make the same number of goods, saves machine time and energy, and allows more time to run billable product. Over the years, Traco has invested heavily in digital printing presses, conversion machinery and training to drastically reduce waste in the production process. We carefully plan jobs to maximize print on material webs and minimize trim offs. Internal processes also record waste amounts to identify areas of improvement. Minimizing waste in production is a process of continuous improvement job by job and continues to be part of our long-term machine investment thinking.
