Environmental Conduct

What are we trying to achieve?

One of Amcor’s key Environment Policy objectives is:

‘To ensure environmentally responsible behaviour is embraced as an integral part of our operations, we specifically undertake to conduct operations in compliance with relevant local environmental legislation, regulations and licences.’

What have we achieved?

To date, 60 Amcor sites have achieved ISO 14001 accreditation for their environmental management systems, representing all our key sites in Europe and Australia. Many of our other sites have environmental management systems accredited to other environmental standards.

We monitor and remediate our sites that have been contaminated by past practices, many of which related to operations before Amcor’s ownership, to enable on-going use of the land as an industrial property. For example, in FY 2008/09 we undertook 10 Phase 1 environmental assessments and 10 detailed Phase 2 assessments in our Australasian Business. One Australasian site required remediation activities to be carried out as a result of the investigation, which has since been completed. We continued ongoing monitoring and remediation activities at our legacy sites in the United States, Canada, Europe and Latin America.

In FY 2008/09, no significant spills occurred at Amcor’s sites and Amcor had no fines for non-compliance with environmental laws or regulations. Two minor environmental incidents occurred.

During a building project for the Ukraine factory, the source of water for fire water tanks and factory needs came from three water wells. Amcor Rentsch Ukraine has permission and limits for water from the wells, but does not have a licence for groundwater use. The site was issued a warning by local authorities and the application for a licence started in February 2009.

During removal of an underground storage tank at Amcor Flexibles Lieksa, the soil around the tank was found to be polluted because of a small leakage due to corrosion of the tank. Legal authorities were informed. Testing of the soil showed that the concentration of solvents in the ground was insignificant, so no further action was required.