Blow Molder Packs Sustainability Into Every Container
With back-to-back EcoVadis platinum recognitions, Ring Container Technologies is a sustainability frontrunner. PT toured the company’s Fontana, California, blow molding facility to see what it takes to be an eco-conscious producer of plastics packaging.
The tree in front of Ring Container Technologies’ Fontana, California, facility may be gone, but the company’s steadfast commitment to sustainability remains. Back in 2011 in response to growing customer interest and an industry-wide sustainability push, the producer of rigid plastics packaging began an intensive investigation of the eco-friendliness of its own operations, which today are spread across 20 locations globally, with 18 U.S. sites in addition to facilities in Canada and the U.K.
In Fontana, where the company has four extrusion blow molding lines for producing rigid containers, including food-contact packages, this eco-consciousness peaked in 2012 with the creation of a Sustainability Week. The newfound emphasis on sustainability manifest itself in everything from lowering chiller temperatures and checking pneumatic lines for holes to upgrading factory lighting and eliminating stretch film in secondary packaging of finished goods. It also included the planting of a tree — a living totem to the company’s awakened eco-consciousness. Fontana employees cleared a space, dug a hole and planted the sapling, nursing and watering it until one morning when it was gone — the target of an unusual theft.
Fast forward to January 2025, and sustainability assessment platform EcoVadis announced that for the second year in a row, Ring was awarded its highest sustainability rating — platinum — placing the company in the top 1% of companies evaluated globally by EcoVadis. Recognition for Ring’s sustainable practices goes back further and reflects continuous improvement with a silver rating in 2021 followed up by gold in 2022 before the back-to-back platinums.
Brian Smith, Ring’s president and CEO, admits that after that first mid-aughts’ wave, a lot of the sustainability hubbub “quieted down,” but not for Ring and not in Fontana. “Fontana just kept on doing everything,” Smith says. “When sustainability interest came back around, including EcoVadis, a lot of these systems were already in place; the culture was here.”
