General Mills / Annies / Patrick Keenan

https://www.annies.com/
https://www.generalmills.com/

Live from the SPC Advance in Atlanta Georgia
https://sustainablepackaging.org/

What's your favorite Annies / General Mills Cereals? 
Why aren't cereal bags resealable? 
Who was the first cereal brand to add PCR to their bags? 

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Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:15

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. We are live from the SPC Advance, and I have Mr. Patrick Keenan from General Mills. He's the r and d principal engineer. How are you sir? I'm good. How are you? Good, good. It's an honor to meet you. I've heard great things about you. Awesome. I love your glasses. Thank you. Those are really cool. Much cooler than mine. But that's okay. We'll talk about that later. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? How did you get to such a prestigious point

Patrick Keenan: 0:43

in your career? Sure. Yeah. So I've been doing packaging r and d work for 15 years now. My background is materials engineering. I grew up in Canada. I went to school there and eventually made my way to the Midwest where I was packaging r and d for a can maker. Oh. And they they moved me out to California to canned tomatoes and peaches out there. But eventually I moved over to the wine side of the business and was doing wine packaging before eventually joining General Mills and at General Mills. I've been doing Packaging r and d for about seven years on the Annie's brand, so organic Mac cheese. Oh yeah. Okay. Which was a great brand to kind of focus on sustainable packaging design, cuz they were very, Or not only were our consumers receptive to it, but our brand was receptive to it. My

Cory Connors: 1:27

kids love Annie's Good. Yeah. So thank you. It's dangerous. Yeah. Well, Well that's excellent. Can , talk to us a little bit about what General Mills is doing to improve sustainability of your

Patrick Keenan: 1:39

packaging? Yeah. Yeah. So we have a commitment to be fully designed to be fully recyclable by 2030. Wow. And we have a very unique set of products, so it's a, it's challenging some of our products. We have to do quite a bit of work to solve recyclability on it, but the team that I work on today we're hyper focused on designing for recyclability for packages that aren't recyclable. Mm-hmm. and then participating in external events like Spbc where we can help collaborate in the industry to kind of shift the industry cuz we think that obviously we can't solve all the problems of recyclability alone. We need to work collaboratively.

Cory Connors: 2:13

And that's a word that keeps coming up. And it makes sense. You know, this SPC is an amazing opportunity to learn from each other. Yes. I mean, I'm. Blown away by the amount of wisdom in this building. Yeah. You know, 500 of the brightest minds in the world of packaging well in the world. Really. But can, can you give us an example of a, an event you've been to here that was really exciting to you? Yeah, so,

Patrick Keenan: 2:42

There was a panel that I was just on that. I like was one of the passions for the panel was behind having clearer standards. So I work in r and d, so I'm very technical.. I want, like, I, you know, I don't want any fogginess of whether or not something's recyclable. I want to do a lab test. I want the lab test to have definitive results on whether or not something's recyclable. Yep. And so since this is kind of like, a developing space and sustainability, there isn't necessarily all, always standards for some innovation. Yeah. So that was kind of the impetus behind the panel was to kind of like spark that thought within the, the people that we're listening to it, that there are some gaps in standards that we need to start addressing and working on collaboratively to like set those standards so that we can have like a clear definitive lab test that says, Yes, this is a recycled board. No it isn't. I recognize that's kind of a dream state, but because I'm such a technical person, Is the space I wanna live

Cory Connors: 3:33

in. I think it's attainable. Yeah. And I, I think it's a long term goal. Sure. But more importantly, what's your, what's your favorite general mill cereal?

Patrick Keenan: 3:43

So, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch was for a long time, my favorite, but I I know it's ridiculous. I'm even eating it. But Reese's pieces of cereal, it's just the best snack. I mean, it's a, a, a sweet treat, but I love it. Oh, I have to agree. Yeah. But I also have to sell Annie cereal too. Not as popular, but it, I sell there and actually the Annie cereals really cool. I'm, I'm selling it here. But yeah, we won an SPC innovator award a couple years ago. It was the first food contact. PA food contact packaging that had PCR in it. Wow. So we were able to do 35% PCR in that cereal liner, and we took the whole back of pack to talk about it. We don't talk about it on back a pack anymore, but all the Annies cereal and all the Cascadian farm cereal have 35% PCR in the cereal liner. So I'll sell that one from a sustainability standpoint.

Cory Connors: 4:32

Well, and that's important, right? Yeah. And it's delicious cereal as well. Yes. I've heard. Good. Let's talk about what companies need to do to be more sustainable with their packaging. You mentioned pcr. Is that, is that the goal? Just increasing PCR levels

Patrick Keenan: 4:47

Yeah, I mean, I think getting towards recyclable packaging. I think our consumers ask for it all the time. They want our packaging to be recyclable. There's obviously gonna be some trade offs from a sustainability standpoint when you're hyperfocused on recyclability, but I kind of think it's, it's step one. It's like if we could get to a point where our packaging is recyclable, it opens up opportunities for us to think about sustainability more broadly. Right. So I think that's the. The mission critical right now. And I think a lot of brands have commitments to specific years to get to recyclable, but I think that's where kind of I see a lot of the energy focus right now. Yeah.

Cory Connors: 5:22

And, and like you said, defining what that means. Yes. What does that mean, recyclable. And does that curbside, is it technically, you know yeah.

, Patrick Keenan: 5:32

I would say that I think the critical part of it is that it's circular, so it works within collection, sortation, reprocessing, and markets. And then I think another like emerging one is prevalence. It's come up a lot, but like, if you're shifting a category to recyclable, the whole category has to shift so the consumers don't have to like guess at something, but they just understand it. But, Also when it makes it to a recycling facility, they don't need to pick out individual types of package, but rather they just know that type is So, I think of it as that holistic thing. The goal of labeling is obviously critical too, right? Like if you could label something as recyclable, but it's a developing field, so like it's gonna change in the next five years, it's gonna change. So we might not necessarily be able to say something's recyclable today, but if we work on. Those pillars eventually will be able to get to being able to label and say it's recyclable.

Cory Connors: 6:21

Well, , I agree a hundred percent. Yeah. I was thrilled to interview you for a couple reasons, but one is I wanna ask you, why aren't cereal bags reclosable. It drives us all crazy in the industry, and I get asked that all the time. I don't know.

Patrick Keenan: 6:34

Yeah, . I would say that we hear that from consumers a lot, , and there we certainly have, I think we have some product lines that have sealable features. Okay. I think it's something that we talk about a lot. There's obviously trade offs there too, and especially when you think about sustainability you're adding a feature that is gonna add to the overall weight and impact sustainability. And does, is it just a consumer perception that zipping it is keeping it fresh versus just rolling it and closing it? Right., but consumer perception matters, Right. So yeah, no, it's something we think about all the time. I would say there are certain products that do have a re-closed future Yeah. Feature. But then I would just say, just eat all your cereal at once. don't don't need. That's good advice. You don't need. Fill up, Get a big bowl, fill it all the way up again. Listen up

Cory Connors: 7:14

kids. Yeah., we, when I was growing up, I had two older brothers and we used to eat cereal out of Tupperware bowls about this big when we were teenagers, so. Perfect.

Patrick Keenan: 7:25

Yeah. And if it's a Tupperware bowl that if you need it for later, you could reseal that. Yeah, that's it.

Cory Connors: 7:30

That's the answer. Yeah. Perfect. We don't need resealable bags. Nope. Nope. We just need to eat more. Okay. Well, excellent. Thank you so much for your time. This is, Yeah, no problem. An honor. How do people get in touch with you? How do they reach out to your company?

Patrick Keenan: 7:43

Yeah, I mean I would say find beyond LinkedIn is probably the best place and happy to connect. So, Patrick Keenan, look for somebody that worked at General Mills or Annies . So you'll easily find me and reach out there. I'm, I'm responsible on that platform. I'll add

Cory Connors: 7:56

all that to the notes, so if you're listening, just scroll up and click. All right. Thank you, sir. Great, Thank you very much.