Novolex Company Culture

Novolex Mission, Vision & Values

Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility at Novolex

NOVOLEX™ subscribes to the Environmental Protection Agency’s approach to sustainable packaging known as Sustainable Materials Management (SMM).  We believe that opportunities to improve environmental impacts, or footprints, reside in three phases of products lifecycle, the manufacturing, market and end of life phases.  We also recognize that packaging sustainability must encompass a full lifecycle approach to prevent hidden environmental tradeoffs.  Our employees strive to continuously improve our performance in each of these phases.

Manufacturing Sustainability
Sustainability is embedded in our products from designed to manufactured all the way to consumption. We take pride in quality manufacturing, innovation, use of recycled content and low impact substrates, energy and logistics efficiency projects, and other innovations that are a huge part of the NOVOLEX™ culture. Industry leading innovations such as the “Gray is the New Green” recycled content plastic retail bag, EcoCraft’s low impact foodservice packaging, DublLife’s 100% recycled content paper retail bags, X-Liner’s recycled content can liners, and other products help to reduce negative impact before our products leave the factory.

Market (Product) Sustainability
The least sustainable packaging option will always be the one that doesn’t work. NOVOLEX™ recognizes that packaging serves a purpose.  That purpose can range from food safety and protecting a product to marketing or labeling and safe transportation by a consumer.  Simply put, quality packaging reduces waste from damage, spoilage, or other factors and is why market sustainability is one of the most important aspects of packaging sustainability.  We also recognize that properly designed packaging reduces waste caused by excessive packaging.  NOVOLEX™ engineers work closely with our customers and markets to understand how we can best make packaging that reduces product waste while helping to grow a sustainable economy.

End of Life Sustainability–NOVOLEX™ packaging always has an end of life plan.  No matter if our products are paper or plastic, we are continually looking at ways to make more of them recyclable or compostable so that we can facilitate reduction of packaging going to landfills.  NOVOLEX™ recognizes that many packaging designs aren’t recyclable or compostable because of market demand for designs that protect or preserve products.  In these cases, we recognize that the packaging impact is far smaller than the potential environmental impact of lost products or spoiled food, but we keep partnering with the industry and market to hopefully one day make these designs recyclable and/or compostable as well.  NOVOLEX™ has long been a leader in end of life design.  Our Bag-2-Bag® recycling program was the industry’s first closed loop recycling program for plastic retail bags.  We continue to support bag and film recycling with two recycling centers in Indiana and Wisconsin.  Additionally our Eco-Products brand is recognized as one of the packaging industry leaders in compostable foodservice offerings.  Please visit our product pages to understand the many sustainability stories our team has written over the years.

Sustainable Education and Experts— Sustainability goes beyond NOVOLEX™ and our customers and includes consumers.  That is why we embrace consumer education as well as new technologies. NOVOLEX™ is an active member of trade associations and programs that educate consumers about packaging reduction, recycling, composting and recycled content.  We also take part in programs that improve our understanding of strengthen our sustainabilty and sustainable practices as well as provide third party certification of our products.