Berry Global has announced its first three sites in North America to achieve the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) PLUS designation to support its growing North America-based customer demand for more sustainable packaging. The company is a Fortune 500 global manufacturer and leading marketer of plastic packaging products.

With many brand owners searching for pathways to achieve their sustainability goals, inclusive of renewable or recycled material use in their packaging, Berry’s ISCC PLUS certified facilities can provide customers with assurance of a product’s material composition. These materials meet the ISCC’s standards for recycled, renewable, and recycled-renewable materials, providing traceability along the supply chain, verifying that certified companies meet high environmental and social standards, Berry Global said in a press release.

ISCC PLUS certification allows Berry to bring in-demand certified circular products to market, presenting customers with options for advanced recycled materials on a mass balance basis to meet their sustainability goals.

It crosses multiple product lines, allowing customers the potential to leverage Berry’s broad expertise across a number of manufacturing processes for the certified resins. The certification validates the mass balance approach, tracking the quantity and sustainability characteristics of recycled and/or renewable content in the value chain, and attributing it based on verifiable bookkeeping with predefined and transparency requirements.

The company’s facilities in Evansville, Indiana; Nashville, Tennessee; and Odon, Indiana, have been awarded the certificate from SCS Global Services. Processes currently located at the newly-certified sites include thermoforming, injection moulding, lamination, blown film, and cast extrusion. Products made in these facilities primarily serve the food, beverage, foodservice, personal care, and healthcare markets and include products such as primary rigid and flexible packaging, breathable films for surgical garments, and hygiene products such as baby diapers, feminine care, and adult incontinence. Through the addition of these sites, Berry has a total of 39 manufacturing facilities across three continents which boast the ISCC PLUS certification, according to Berry Global.

The certification is an important first step toward delivering on growing consumer expectations in transparency of their purchases. With the ISCC PLUS certification Berry can produce products substituting a percentage or 100 per cent of the virgin resin with certified circular polymers, delivering identical material performance as virgin feedstock.

“We are on a journey to a circular, net-zero economy. ISCC PLUS certification is a critical milestone on that journey because it allows Berry to provide our customers products made from certified circular plastic. By using mass balance, ISCC PLUS certification also helps accelerate the transition by allowing recycled and/or renewable feed stocks to be processed on the same world-scale assets as traditional resins while supporting the long-term vision of decoupling from virgin fossil fuel use,” Diane Marret, director of sustainability for Berry’s North American consumer packaging division said in a statement.