Atlantic Packaging, a market leader in industrial packaging and customized converted products, has announced that the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) has approved its science-based targets for reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2046. With this approval, Atlantic Packaging becomes the first North American packaging company with an approved net-zero target.

By taking drastic action to mitigate climate change, Atlantic Packaging is helping pave the way for the global packaging supply chain to follow suit. Since Atlantic Packaging’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions represent its customers’ Scope 3 emissions, reducing and eventually eliminating emissions will help the company’s customers to reduce their own. As such, Atlantic’s science-based targets directly benefit customers in their own emissions reduction goals.

“This approval is based on the most stringent and ambitious guidelines currently offered by SBTi and serves as an important milestone in our sustainability journey,” said Atlantic Packaging Senior Manager Stewart Whitmire. “We look forward to collaborating with our customers, suppliers, and employees to fulfill these commitments over the next 25 years and hope that our work inspires other companies in the industry and throughout the supply chain to make similar commitments.”

SBTi emerged as a collaboration between CDP, The United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI), and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to help the private sector take aggressive climate action. SBTi helps companies determine how much and how quickly they need to reduce emissions, and, as the name suggests, science-based targets are validated, data-driven commitments showing that a company is doing its part to reach net zero in line with the Paris Agreement.

These targets are considered the gold standard in corporate climate action due to the level of validation and type of climate action required. SBTi’s net-zero actions focus more on the “zero” and less on the “net” while many companies have traditionally relied heavily on carbon offsets to reduce their footprint, which allows them to largely continue business as usual in their operations and supply chain. SBTi has strict requirements that only 10 percent of net-zero reductions can be achieved through offsets, meaning that companies with science-based targets must truly reduce their operational and supply chain emissions to meet their goals.

Atlantic Packaging’s goals also include a commitment that 55 percent of its suppliers will have science-based targets by 2027. The emissions of Atlantic’s suppliers fall under the company’s Scope 3 emissions, and encouraging them to take climate actions directly benefits the company’s own reduction goals. Over the last few years, Atlantic has helped some of its suppliers begin their own climate journeys through the Supplier Leadership on Climate Transitions (S-LoCT) program, which teaches suppliers how to measure, reduce, and set reductions goals for emissions.

For more information on Atlantic Packaging’s SBTi approval, please visit here.