Author Guillermo Dufranc / Packaging To Save The Planet

https://www.linkedin.com/in/guillermodufranc/

Guillermo Dufranc , Packaging To Save The Planet
https://www.amazon.com/Packaging-Save-Planet-relationship-environment/dp/B09SP1G61G/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3OGS74V46UT3V&keywords=packaging+to+save+the+planet+book&qid=1650205204&sprefix=packaging+to+save+the+planet+book%2Caps%2C135&sr=8-2

What can we do to be more sustainable with our packaging? 
Is compostable packaging a good option? 
Why should we reuse packaging as much as possible? 

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I'm here to help you make your packaging more sustainable! Reach out today and I'll get back to you asap.

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Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:31

Welcome to sustainable packaging with Cory Connors . Today's guest is Mr. Guillermo Dufranc , who is a project manager for Tridimage . How are you

Guillermo Dufranc: 0:39

getting him off? Hi, Corey, I'm very pleased to be here with you and in your post guest that I, I love to listen to. And I also love your videos on Tik Tok . I'm a huge fan of your work. Thank you for, for spreading the word regarding them, packaging and

Cory Connors: 0:55

sustainability. Thank you, sir. And I'm enjoying your book. You're an author three times over I believe. And Thank you so much for sending me that we'll talk about that later, but I wanted to kind of go over your background a little bit, how I I've read at least the first third of the book. So I know a little bit more about your background now. But I want to hear it.

Guillermo Dufranc: 1:17

Okay, it's great. It's great. Well, I, I'm a graphic packaging designer that has fallen in love with packaging design. Since I was a kid, I loved FITO Dido the character for seven Up , and I wanted to work on the same kind of job that created that character. I remember asking my brother who, who, who did that? Who's. What is the job that creates that? Now I know that it's more on the side of illustration. Since the character was mainly animated in advertisements, but there was something about the simplicity and work of censuses that it's clear related to packaging design. The power of simplicity and persuasion is probably what I like. Most of packaging design. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 2:05

It's a, it's an amazing interaction with people. And , that I think is kind of a lost art sometimes on some, but , your background in advertising and marketing and design , is long and impressive. So well done. Tell us, tell us about what motivated you to write this amazing book packaging to save the planet. If you're, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see it, but it's a beautiful cover. I'm assuming you designed that. I didn't even,

Guillermo Dufranc: 2:36

I did everything myself.

Cory Connors: 2:39

Well, tell us about it. What, what started that process?

Guillermo Dufranc: 2:42

Well, I think it started 15 years ago when I went to Patagonia or holiday with my family. We rented a quaint little house on a hill, very, very picturesque. And they asked me to separate organic and inorganic. For the first time in my life. So we started doing the same ad at home because I constantly went to the same place, all holiday. So we get used to that. So we said, okay, we can do that every day. You know, life is not so difficult. And then I started well, I, I, firstly I realized how problematic was to find the correct. Well, a way to manage different types of materials. And there was not, the infrastructure was not ready to do that, but imagine 15 years ago was completely different. Maybe it's not so different than nowadays, but

Cory Connors: 3:37

surprisingly.

Guillermo Dufranc: 3:39

It was hard because nobody could understood what I was doing. So I started reading a lot about sustainability., I bought so many books and recently in the last two years, there was a boom of books regarding packaging and sustainability, which is great. I am so happy to be part of the, of the ones that are aware or concerned about Th the need of transformation of the packaging industry and also a society, because I think it's it's a combo. So I, I took some courses in the last two years learned to load with those kinds of interviews I did during the pandemic in may in 2020. I, I quite can say that it saved my life when I started my YouTube channel and I. I learn a lot from a lot of people of different areas like architectures our engineers or water treatment. I lot of things far beyond sustainability in packaging directly. So I decided to put everything together in a book. I talked about my vision on what is sustainability. Regarding the packaging, because we tend to simplify things. This is green, this is environmentally friendly, this is sustainable. So it's quite hard to find the right words sometimes or understand what, what do we really want to say when you say that? So I also wanted to, to put in front of the challenges we are facing, it's not. The industry has not been shaved because we wanted to be that way. It's the way it was most convenient for the industry. For us as consumers are human beings. So it's I don't think it's nobody's fault if we are all responsible in certain ways of the way that the but I think the good news is that now we are aware because Romans used to too. To have landfills with amphoras some waste. So it, this is not new, but in the scale we are doing, this is not sustainable. Okay. So we, we have to change this in terms of industry and society. And I also wanted to do. Examples, what all the companies are doing to be sustainable and also wanted to reflect on habits and provide ideas to put in practice, not only at home, but in your daily life, because I think if you care enough about sustainability in your life, you will know what. At your work, it's not something that you can study and do a undo in the office, and then you go home and you do have a completely different behavior. So I think it's good to be part of, of your. Daily thoughts and you will understand what the real problem problem is. Oh,

Cory Connors: 6:43

I agree. A hundred percent. It's a, it's a yes or no. Do you want to do this or not? And of course there's lots of gray in the middle. But I think we can, we can all learn from each other. I want to quickly read a passage from your book if that's okay. Great packaging is not more or less sustainable, but rather has a greater or lesser environmental impact. I thought that was very, that just, that hit me. And I want you to speak , towards that a little bit, if you don't mind.

Guillermo Dufranc: 7:14

Well, everything we do has an impact, right? We like it or not. We are aware of it or not. So Sometimes words tend to sound better than it's the reality. So we think this is a stain. This packaging is really very sustainable. I know that we need to get messages quickly . To the audience and, and they have to understand what are we saying? But in the book, having some time to reflect on, to write on that, I wanted to go deeper in that because we need to think about how to make a less impact. Not, not just because we are shifting for a mono material. I don't know, or reusable scheme, this is sustainable. Okay. These kinds, last listener, even back then, all their practices, and this is improving. This is good, but it's maybe never will be enough. We, this is a path. I mean, when you start working, you never stop working in that way. So I think that it's, I read that. And there's some, I call it in the book that we have to keep in mind that sustainability is going to take us forever.

Cory Connors: 8:35

Yeah. That's that's that's there's no, there's no finish line. I love that. And I, I fully agree with. But it's not something all of the sudden, because we made this change where sustainable now. No, it's a continuous journey. It's like life. I learned something new every single day and I love it. I love absorbing information and reading books like yours and improving the quality of, of life for, for my kids someday by my actions. And. It's you're exactly right. Every day is a step towards the right direction. If you.

Guillermo Dufranc: 9:16

It's like a combust that will help you to make the right choices and decisions. According to your perspective, there's no right or wrong. It's just what you consider most appropriate and what suits best the situation, the context, the economic situation, the. Technological capabilities. It's a violence that you have to make is there is not one magic solution. So it's, I think the gears, a combination of things, because we have to tend to think that there's only one answer for everything. And I think that the answer is as many answers as we can get. And the combination of all of them will be A better future than trying to solve things in just one way.

Cory Connors: 10:05

Right? Yeah. And, and I was hoping that you could just give a couple of ideas for companies, but people always ask me, how can we be more sustainable? So what are maybe an example or two of things that have worked in your expense?

Guillermo Dufranc: 10:22

Sure there are many things to do. And that's what is more exciting and also overwhelming because I got where they, again, we started. Okay. We have the, the most long journey starts with the smallest step. So firstly, the best practice I think is to map what the company is. And started thinking about asking yourself what we are doing when we are really doing what, what do materials come from are, what are the environmental impact of the, of the of the materials of the activities we are doing? What is the. But change handoff improvement because sometimes someone is obsessed for shifting immaterial. And maybe that the greater impact is not in that material. Maybe it's in the use of the, of the baggage or, or, or in transportation. It's good to, to analyze what has more impact on the activity on the overall and start doing things on what you can reduce most ideally conduct in an LCA or a life cycle assessment. However, there, there, there are some principles like eliminating problematic materials that we know that have potential that I potentially harmful reduce unnecessary. That is full of examples. Every day. You can explain if you ask for a coffee and a muffin, you get six or seven and recyclable materials and, and we have no explanation for that behavior. So it's very easy to start in that way because you start reducing. It's not more exciting. Then the, what you are doing now considering your more materials in terms of dinging, alleging Arbenz is way we are a bit restrained sometimes, but sometimes not sometimes just shifting material to another. And that will, that's the. It's not okay. We are shifting now. We are sustainable. Okay. Now, now we have to improve how the material is recovered to introduce post-consumer recycled materials considering the standardization of certain shapes or sizes that you can have less resources of or buy less is it's not just a question of spending more. Also increase the probability of recycling of using materials that are more probable to be recycled also in there's some times we are thinking, we are thinking a lot about the, the. The carbon footprint that it's okay , but sometimes that provides some kind of paralysis because we don't know what to do. It's looks like we can do anything we are doing. I think we have to be positive about what we are doing is trying to help. And I, I am more on the side to start doing and change. On the, when you are doing and not freezing because you don't know what to do, right.

Cory Connors: 13:24

Don't let fear stop your progress. Take one step. Like you said, one step in the journey. This is a journey. This is a daily. Journey a lifelong journey towards sustainability. And like you said, there's no finish line, unfortunately. But we can all work together , to affect positive change. I, I absolutely agree. That's what.

Guillermo Dufranc: 14:22

We are going to fail in some way. We don't have to fear. Okay. We are making decisions. We are not 100% sure if the decisions are good, but we have to do something and learn from what we do.

Cory Connors: 14:35

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's a good segue to the next question. What do you recommend to consumers? How can we as consumers be a part of the solution. Guillermo Dufranc: That's going as humor. We all have some kind of responsibility of buying products, according to what we are planning, what we are planning to do with the baggage on post-consumer situation. That that was really changed my way of thing. Oh. Of seeing packaging since I started. Sorting waste and started thinking, okay, where do I have to take this? So when I asked, I was in front of the on the star and the star on Francis of a shelf, I started to thinking, okay, I am not buying this because I don't know what to do with this after I use it. So that's the, the first question I think we have to make a week. The small steps and I know how to be perfect. And probably we will never, we will we need to avoid disposable material. We should try to reuse and refill whenever it's possible. And it's not that hard really? When, when you start, w w only with one thing with one shampoo or so, or,

Guillermo Dufranc: 15:58

Rice, I don't know. There's loads of examples. It's just to look around the corner where. The stores that are near you, that they will surely offer bulk products. So that one. Okay. You may say a film of, of a package of rice is nothing. Okay. It's nothing, but it's is isn't that a philosophy? Okay. I you're smart. I started with one only one rights packet two, but then I started with others and other things that that's a first start. We are I want us to say, okay, I think we, we can also start supporting that the S the, the small businesses that are looking for something different, that's the great way to find at least different different kinds of. The products. And I think that that is what makes the big companies change and shift because when they have a enough target that they could sell a more sustainable product, they will, they will copy, or they will buy the small companies. So it's great to start looking for what would I, small companies doing for this? And I started trying, so I started. Yeah, with solid personal care shampoo, the order on toothpaste based they save a lot of energy costs by transport because they are smaller. They don't have water. So maybe there's not one. It's a sustainable packaging, but it's just, it has lesser impact because of the energy you need to transport those goods. So that's, that's more sustainable that

Cory Connors: 17:48

they call that voting with your dollars. And that's so key to this whole thing. When we, when the bigger companies realize, oh, people want this kind of packaging, they want you know, a more sustainable option. They're going to start making it and they're going to stop making the one that's that's worse for the planet, which is great.

Guillermo Dufranc: 18:08

And we also can pick when we are considering sorting waste, we are choosing wisely, easy to recycle materials of materials. We know that are the better pay, like minium it's, it's a crime that aluminum cans are rolling the streets. It's a crime. So I think we, we all can do something. Really small or needs the first step that makes you do the second one. And then you will never stop.

Cory Connors: 18:36

I absolutely agree. And it's just, it's uplifting to me to hear someone who has the same philosophy. So thank you. I wanted to get your wisdom on a kind of packaging that started to surface lately. It's called compostable. What are your thoughts on that? Do you feel like it's a better option than recyclable or reusable?

Guillermo Dufranc: 18:59

I don't think it, it is not better, but it's no, no, it is. It isn't worse. I think, like I said before, it's a combination of solutions. First of all eliminating unnecessary materials are, I think it's the most urgent and we have to dress right then reducing or reusing what reusing packages that will save the. Of recycling and we'll save the raw materials that we have to extract , to make a new one. And so it saves twice and recycling when we reuse those bags, those containers. Again, and again, and again, it is said that both just the glass bottles , you have to reuse them 15 or 20 times to come to convince the, the carbon footprint they create for the manufacturing. So when you reuse a lot, a container, you can kind of do reuse you should recycle. And then we have compostable, I think, as the list solution. Mostly with materials during that are in contact with food. I think that the, the, because sorting compostable materials and recycling recyclable materials is impossible. Multiple. So it's very difficult for a consumer or for a offer, a machine that is sorting materials in us, the separation facility. That you cannot tell the difference. Maybe you can pull the big billboard, like the bow, like the box that say, I am not plastic. Okay. You are plastic, but you're blasting from, from tiles or veal bio-based materials. It's really hard to sort. And if we are, it is, if it is hard to sort different types of plastics, paper, metal glass. Imagine if you have to sort compostable. So compostable packages will be great for. And when you can compost in a close loop and you make sure you don't mix compostable with technical materials in a year, which will have two different ways of sorting materials organic or biological materials. Technical or industrial materials. So if we can put those streams separately, we can consider compostable materials for organic waste to produce at great escape. Clean energy because they have the potential. So if we have a problem with food waste nowadays, that is terrible and we can boot that waste into and, and transforming it into clean energy. And we use compostable packages because. Some ways spoil a recyclable materials because of the, of the organic waste. Okay. Compostable could go that in that way, but I, I, I am not 100% sure. We have to make compostable materials to look like recyclable materials,

Cory Connors: 22:26

right? Yeah. And that's a big, that's a big issue. I posted on LinkedIn. What would you do with a compostable packaging? And 37% of people said they would recycle it. Yeah. That's a, that's a problem.

Guillermo Dufranc: 22:40

You know, the guy and then there's some issues that growing food crops to produce plastics may require. Intensive agriculture. So we don't have to think that we should go in in one way. That's what I was saying before is there's no one right solution. Okay. Maybe we have a control agriculture. We don't, we are not. We are not in doing the first station. Okay. Maybe that's okay. But the gradation of compostable Ricard requires certain conditions that do not just things in landfill. So we need the facilities. Right. Nowadays, we don't have it. I, I think we should have it. But nowadays we don't have it right. The the third what concerns me most is that compostable plastic can spoil recycled plastic. So, yes. That's why I don't. By a lot, the idea of making a material, similar packages of compostable materials. So I think it's okay. And we should be really careful to throw all combustible materials with organic waste for in food service, I think is the, the most reasonable scenario for, for that.

Cory Connors: 24:05

It makes sense to have a compostable tray that you put food in. I agree, because that then you, when you're done the scraps and the tray go into the compost bin but you're right. We're not there yet. And there's so much work to be done. There's so many steps needed to get to a place where we can fully industrially and dressed really compost everywhere that that will take a lot of.

Guillermo Dufranc: 24:31

Yes, but I think it's a great idea to provide clean energy and to, because I don't trusting home compost because not everybody wants to come. Right. And everybody wants to start waste. Not everybody throw waste into the bins . So we don't, we can't expect so much for him. Humanity.

Cory Connors: 24:53

We are asking a lot aren't we? Yeah,

Guillermo Dufranc: 24:57

we've got to make things seem.

Cory Connors: 24:59

No. No. Well, thank you so much, Guillermo. This has been amazing. Can you can you tell us how, how to get ahold of you? What's what's the best way for people to reach out?

Guillermo Dufranc: 25:09

Well, I am very active on LinkedIn because I don't feel so alone. Thanks to people like you. I, I, I feel that there's a, a great community there. Yeah, we support each other and I think it's great. And we are trying to find the way together. I think it's it's the only way we can do this. So in LinkedIn is the best way. And also what the. Website of the sang agency through the image.com. And I am in my social media. I mostly speak Spanish. So if if there is a Spanish listeners, you can check me. My Instagram profile, where I share thoughts and and the videos I I do for the YouTube channel. And so what the YouTube channel is also a place, but I speak mainly Spanish. So I will start doing

Cory Connors: 26:07

videos. What's that called Guillermo?

Guillermo Dufranc: 26:10

You do.com/. Okay. Yeah, just

Cory Connors: 26:16

your name. Okay. Okay. Easy to find. I'll put links to all this in the show notes and make sure you check out packaging to save the planet. This is a great book, highly recommend it. And again, thank you, Guillermo. Really, really appreciate your wisdom and your. Thank you, Cory . Thank you. And thank you, Landsberg Orora for sponsoring this podcast. We truly appreciate it. If you're listening, take a minute to subscribe and give us a review. Thanks everybody.