Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors presented by Atlantic Packaging
Join industry leaders, innovators, and changemakers as we explore the future of packaging through the lens of sustainability. Hosted by Cory Connors, an industry expert with over 25 years of experience, and presented by Atlantic Packaging, the leader in innovative sustainable solutions, we dive into what’s working (and what’s not) from cutting-edge materials to circular design strategies that can reduce waste and protect our planet.
Each episode blends real data, expert insights, and a dose of fun to help you stay informed and inspired. Whether you're in the packaging industry or simply passionate about sustainability, this podcast is your weekly go-to resource for making smarter, greener choices.
Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors presented by Atlantic Packaging
A new Book! Materials & Sustainability by Julia Freer Goldstein and Paul Foulkes - Arellano
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https://bookshop.org/p/books/materials-and-sustainability-building-a-circular-future-julia-l-f-goldstein/20715755?ean=9781032529325
Learn about how materials work and how they can actually be more sustainable and circular!
It was an absolute pleasure to interview my friends Julia and Paul again about their brand new book!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulfoulkesarellano/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliagoldstein/
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Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guests are my friends, Paul Fuchs Aureliano and Julia Freer Goldstein. I'm very excited to have you both on. Julia, can you start and just to introduce yourself a little bit and tell us, your, a little bit about your background.
Julia Freer Goldstein:Sure. I am a materials geek ever since I discovered the field of material science when I was in college. And my career has taken a lot of different turns. I've been an engineer, a journalist. I'm a teacher and back around 10 years ago, I started really being more concerned about the social and environmental impacts of all these fascinating materials that engineers were inventing and that led to my first book material value that came out in 2019.
Cory Connors:Incredible.
Julia Freer Goldstein:So now, I've done some more things since then. Yeah, we can talk about that a little bit.
Cory Connors:that's what we're going to excited to talk about today. Now you've both been on my podcast separately and, Paul, I think you've been on twice already, but I'm thrilled to have you on again. let's hear just a quick background about you, sir.
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:Yeah, very quickly. 30 years working in industrial design packaging, probably 2012. I got, put in charge of creating a kind of sustainable packaging offer, alongside a guy called Dr. Chris Sherwin, who, really was my kind of guru. In teaching about stable packaging, got heavily interested in circular economy back in 2019. Started purely working on circular economy projects and that has taken me out of packaging and into fashion, footwear, farming, which I never expected to do from a packaging background.
Cory Connors:I love the diversity both of you have and which is why it's so exciting to say what I'm about to say here which is you two wrote a book together and It's the book materials and sustainability building a circular future Yeah Let's talk about how this came to be and, how it came together. Julia, we'll start with you.
Julia Freer Goldstein:one thing that you may notice is Paul and I are in the same room, but normally I live in the Seattle area and Paul lives in the UK and, we've been working together. for a while now, and this is the first time we're actually meeting in person because we have this lunch coming up. So good. Anyway. as I said, the book came out in 2019 and people bought it. And one of the people who bought it was Paul and that was spring of 2020. He reached out to me. I think it was on LinkedIn and said, Oh, I read your book. I'd love to talk. And I said, sure. And we had this zoom conversation and I remember Paul, you were just so amazed that you read this book. And then a week or two later, you're talking to the author and we just, we kept in touch. And at one point Paul said, I think we need material value to the 2020s book is still good and all a lot has changed. I've seen that too, just the interest in things like sustainable manufacturing and really looking at what things are made of and really including stuff like what are the climate impacts. So many more people are interested in this and a lot of progress has been made. So I just kept thinking about it. And also in 2022, I was getting close to launching my book, Beyond the Green Team, which is about how companies communicate about sustainability in their organizations. And I thought, I don't have time to write another book. But I said, idea for you, Paul, how would you like to be a co author?
Cory Connors:Yeah, put him to work, right.
Julia Freer Goldstein:Yeah,
Cory Connors:because
Julia Freer Goldstein:we decided to expand it to cover some other materials that weren't included in the first book. And so I made a deal with Paul and I said, how about you draft the first draft of those initial chapters, Because I wrote the whole first book. This has been a very much a collaborative effort. Yeah, I
Cory Connors:know he has. I'm excited to learn about it. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah.
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:And when this is, we're going back to early 2022, I thought well, we'll wrap this up in a few months.
Julia Freer Goldstein:Yeah i'm
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:julie was like no way like oh, we just have to write a few more chapters We have to do some more interviews But yeah interviewing 24 people across the world All these different continents, trying to get in their diaries. some of the people we interviewed, we, it took five months to get the interview. I never expected that. and then yeah, getting their approvals then to print what we. Got from them. My goodness. What a process the writing bit is actually reasonably short It's all of the factory visits the field trips. Julia's been to Universities i've been to labs We've both interviewed people, on time zones where we've got up at six in the morning or we've been interviewing at 11 at night just to get hold of these really precious people. and yeah, it's been a super collaborative effort where we talk every two weeks for the past two years. It's meant to be an hour, sometimes 90 minutes in we're discovering new science and we're discussing things that neither of us knew and making New conclusions that are in the book. So it's been a massive learning process Amazing. I
Julia Freer Goldstein:thought maybe it would come out in April 2023. I said, no, not quite yet. And when we had the first draft, like, yes, let's celebrate that, but let's not break out the champagne quite yet, because there is going to be a long and involved editing process. And that involves getting beta readers. We've had some fantastic beta readers. To give us feedback. And we ended up rearranging the chapters. We ended up, it's like every time I would read through a chapter, I would see something else I want to fix. And at some point you have to stop and say, let's send the book to production. But,
Cory Connors:I've seen Paul's bookshelf, when in a previous interview, I know he's an avid reader for, so for him to be so excited about your book means that it was a really good book and very insightful, Julia, so well done. For the two of you to come together is a dream team in our industry, but I know who you are and what you're all about, but who should read your book? who are the people that you think would get the most insight out of this? You go first, Julia. Okay.
Julia Freer Goldstein:All right. there are really two different audience segments and they are related. So there's the academic segment and the corporate segment. And the reason I say they're related is there's a lot more industry business collaboration. And I saw that, especially when I talked to Dan Schwartz at the University of Washington, and he has this clean energy test beds where it's very much a, community involvement. There's a lot of research. That is done at the university at a basic level, and then to be applied, they work with business. So I would say both of those groups can really benefit. And from a, when you think about students, certainly in many different fields of engineering, especially in survey courses, this is not a highly technical book where you need a master's or a PhD in some particular field to understand it. Any intelligent person with an interest in the topic can pick it up and get something from it.
Cory Connors:Yeah, I can attest to that. I read it and I don't have any fancy degrees other than a bachelor. So, and it was very good. And I enjoyed it. I appreciated it. the drill down into the science base behind these materials is incredible. And I think it's the reason why, we need to read it as packaging professionals.
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:and I think the interesting thing is, from the very beginning, Julia was very clear, everybody had to be able to read it. So it was like really, creating a, a language that anybody could, even I, it was basically my view is if you hate science, you will still love this book because that's the level. That it needs to be at and, as we're reviewing, Julia would just always be saying, spell that out. Spell that out. And that's one of, I'm not a writer. I'm a consultant. I'm a kind of, spend a lot of time looking for novel materials. I'm, I feel more like a hunter, like going out and trying to find stuff in the world that does what I need it to do. But I don't write about it. I normally just show people stuff going look at this. This is amazing But then you have to describe it in words and You know what I learn and which I think has stuck with me Probably in the past 12 months when I write stuff for clients for investors It's very clear Change the way that I write so you and I might talk about pla and we all know what pla is in the packaging world You We can't just say that. We have to explain what it is, what it does, the pros and cons, the upsides and downsides. So you think about things in a really different way when you have to write for all these different audiences. And it could be somebody who's in high school, or it could be somebody who's a professor of sustainability. It's the whole gamut of people.
Julia Freer Goldstein:There is a variety of experience that readers bring to it. And that's part of getting beta readers who come from different areas of expertise. And we did have people. Who knew a lot about one particular aspect of the book. And we said, Oh, please read this chapter to make sure we didn't get anything wrong. I'm perfectly willing. And again, my experience as a journalist, part of my background was in, we talked about packaging, a different kind of packaging, semiconductor packaging, which means how you take a computer chip and attach it to a printed circuit board. and make it work properly and protect it from the elements. So it's a different kind of packaging than your folks are talking about. But in any case, I wrote for trade magazines. So I came into book writing with already 15 to 20 years of experience as a professional writer. And I developed my writing skill during that time. And I also know, Even professional writers, even editors. Need editors. And so there's going to be iterations and the first thing that just come, you know what you're seeing here. Oh, here, look what you're seeing here. Hey,
Cory Connors:there it is.
Julia Freer Goldstein:Just first put out there into our word documents.
Cory Connors:Yeah. I can't wait. Get an official copy. I think, I got the original PDF.
Julia Freer Goldstein:So we will sign this. Yes,
Cory Connors:We
Julia Freer Goldstein:will sign this book. And then I'm going to take it back with me. See, we don't need to deal with international shipping. I'm going to take it back with me to Seattle and ship it to you in Portland. Unless we happen to meet up in person.
Cory Connors:That I look forward to that. That would be great. It's nice to have a fellow Northwestern or who's very successful in the industry. So I want to talk a little bit about maybe some nuggets from the book. what's the thing that you learned through this process that you're really excited to tell the community in the sustainability world? I might pick this one out
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:first.
Cory Connors:Yeah.
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:I think, what's interesting is that, we, we finally, we weren't allowed to touch the book again a few months ago Even since then things are changing things are happening. But what we set out to do is Look at manufacturing within a sustainable context and that's not just packaging I think what I learned was the so and I think this will ring a bell with so many people There's so much to learn about other forms of manufacturing that we can then bring into packaging. Yes For me the most exciting thing. I didn't do the interview julia did but when I read it, I was like, oh my goodness julia interviewed francois minac Who's a HP 3d printing. Now, I think I know a lot about 3d printing. I've been, I've even worked on projects, 3d printing chocolate. So I've had some kind of weird and wonderful experience with 3d printing. But what Francois talks about where HP are at will blow your mind. even if you think you know about packaging. Just listen to what HP are doing now, what they're working on, some of the difficulties of, next gen 3D printing. And you're just like, but that cannot be, this is beyond science fiction.
Julia Freer Goldstein:Right.
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:But it's happening, it's real. And I think, look at that, think about traditional packaging, but not just something that's so straightforwardly close to packaging. Yeah. Some of the other things that are happening in manufacturing are so relevant to packaging. Yes. And that's the bit where I'm going, hang on, if they're doing this and we've got that, we can do that kind of manufacturing as well in packaging. And that's actually a big opportunity. I love opportunities. that's, something that gets me excited.
Cory Connors:that's an awesome point. I think 3d printing is such a perfect example of something that was used in production and manufacturing. And then all of a sudden, packaging said, Hey, we could use that too. And HP is definitely an innovator and one of the leaders in that space. I'm totally excited to learn more about what they're doing in your book as well. how about you, Julia? What's something that really stuck with you and you were excited about?
Julia Freer Goldstein:Yeah, yeah, I was the one who's talking to those people in additive manufacturing, but one of the things just. The idea of just looking at something from a different perspective and recognizing that in some cases, there are really tremendous challenges. And 1 thing, which we just, we do touch on in the book is the tremendous difference. And it's going to be a tough thing because it's going to be the biggest difficulty in removing PFAS chemicals. These perfluorochemicals from products and that they are in everything. And it's going to really be a tough thing because and I knew this before. I've talked about this for years that you can't just drop in a substitute. Okay, we don't want to use this because it uses fossil fuels or because it has these toxic chemicals or because it's causing these other problems. let's just swap it in for something else. And it really doesn't work that way. And a lot of the people that we've talked to have really explained very well with their specific situation, those challenges. And so the other thing is really this difficult balance between saying, yeah, let's just change this stuff up or saying the industry is saying, no, we can't. But how far can we push? Yeah. Because I think we can push faster. The pandemic showed us that companies can turn on a dime and suddenly start producing different types of materials with their equipment and different types of products. So if their hand is forced, that's another thing that came up like regulations. Are they leading? Are they lagging? Where did that, where does that come into play? And it depends on where you sit. And so an interesting thing, and I think we note this In the introduction of the book is sometimes our interviewees say things that contradict each other because they have different perspectives and different experiences. And so it's like, take it as it is,
Cory Connors:right.
Julia Freer Goldstein:And just try to figure out the best way to apply it.
Cory Connors:Yeah. Really important topic there. I think we all need to realize that everyone has their point of view. Everyone has their agenda that they're trying to push or trying to, move others out of the way. And so, yeah, said we need to take it with a grain of salt for sure. So I haven't written a book yet. That's not something I've done in my career. Can you tell us the process now? Now it's printed, it's been published, it's printed. What happens now? Do you travel the world on a tour and sell it to everyone that you could possibly meet with or what's next?
Julia Freer Goldstein:All right. Oh, this is the part where I put on my hat as the previous chapter leader of the seattle chapter of the non fiction authors association They don't have chapters anymore. but It's a great organization for anybody who is writing nonfiction books. I first discovered it in 2017 when I had no clue whatsoever about the publishing industry. The idea of, yes, you're going to go on this tour and you're going to sell all these books is not quite reality. and also that, oh, you're just going to write a book and people are going to discover it if you do nothing is also nonsense. So it's a matter of just figuring out how, what resources in terms of both time and money you're willing to put in to get the word out. It's also a matter of reaching the right audiences. The people who really will be interested in this particular book. And so there's a number of ways of doing that. We're talking to your audience now with this podcast. And I love doing that kind of thing, doing podcasts, interviews, talking with people in the press, and we're not talking about, I guess if we could get the big mainstream press to talk about it, that would be nice, but that's very much wishful thinking. It's often, it's the trade magazines. Thanks. are covering materials or packaging or some of the other industries that we touch on in this book. And it's also circling back to all those people we interviewed because they're featured in the book. So don't they want to talk about it with all the people that they know? So there's no one way to market a book. but that's also just because you're done writing it and you have the physical book in your hand. It doesn't mean it's over. It's never too early or too late to keep going with the getting the word out.
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:Yeah. so you're just getting started. Right. It's not the end. it's actually the beginning because, Julia has got some gigs as you might want to call them already speaking gigs, at prestigious universities. I'm doing some kind of, interviews with, packaging media. So, you should see stuff in your packaging magazines across the world over the next but not immediately So again these things Take time. we'll be recording stuff for months probably because actually what to us might seem Or we wrote that a few months ago other people will be like, wow, we never knew there was a book about materials and sustainability and actually We're having new thoughts the whole time So I think one of the things that we're planning to do is keep producing new material new ideas based on the book that we can share either together or separately in other events and particularly around circularity So I'm obviously obsessed, that's all I do all day long. And one of the concepts that I tried to, work on with Julia, you have someone to bounce your ideas around who's, a fearsome academic. Not forgetting as well, you know as well as a great writer is to say look We've got relative circularity where things are relatively better. We have absolute circularity, which is impossible and we've got this kind of like zero circularity. There's an axis But no one talks about people just talk about circularity at the moment as if it's one thing but there's a massive axis from barely what I call barely circular to relatively circular to absolutely And that concept is new. No one's written about it. I want to place different industries on the access or different materials on it. So there's work to be done based on some of the concepts that we're discussing in the book. So I think the work never ends. Yes. I don't think it's the second book, but it's definitely You know, content that needs to be written
Cory Connors:and maybe the second of several more to come in the next, maybe there's part three and five years and part four and 10 years and yeah,
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:I could see this
Cory Connors:being a long term series. Yeah, very exciting. So, speaking of promotion, will you be attending any packaging shows coming up soon that we could meet you at and maybe get a signed book from. Why.
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:I'm trying to think I am cutting back on shows at the moment, so, I'm not planning. this is like a kind of sabbatical for conferences, but I go to so many. you are the king of going to conferences. you do all of them and you report from them. I'm trying to do a sabbatical of show of not going to shows this year. but I doubt that will be the case, but yes, I will be, I'm going to be online a lot and I think Julia as well. Yeah,
Julia Freer Goldstein:I tend, okay, this is my first overseas trip since 2018. I do not do a lot of traveling for multiple reasons. And so it's, there needs to be a good reason. This seemed like a good reason, right? We've got the book launch, author here. We have a UK publisher. There are lots of people that I have, that I want to see here. So I've been, I've been meaning to come to London for a while. but in terms of shows, I like it if they're coming to my area. And honestly, of course. everybody's been working remotely for years, and I'd been doing it for long, long before that. But I also start thinking about, I'd really love to work with more companies in the Seattle area, or even Portland, Pacific Northwest, to be able to be local and be in there. Because when you can actually go and you can see what they're really doing in their factories, in their labs, it's just, It could be so much more fulfilling and I can obviously help with stuff from afar and with video calls and emails, of course. but yeah, that thing in person is good and if I can do it without a whole lot of travel Then that's even better.
Cory Connors:I agree. Yeah, i've cut back this year believe it or not and I but I am excited to go to london packaging week and The sustainable packaging summit in Amsterdam, that might be a good one for you, Paul. Yeah. I know a few people there, maybe we could bring some books and have you do a signing. Yeah.
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:To be honest, I'll tell you why. I'm cutting back what I call the traditional packaging because I'm now obsessed with biomaterials and I'm sure that you know that, Cory, but I'm now, I believe that we can replace fossil fuels more and more with biomaterials. We've seen chips packaging and chocolate packaging from fiber this week. Yeah. I think we can go a lot further with biomaterials and I've got this kind of community called bioconnectors that I built back in the early part of the year, but I haven't known how to work with it. So two days ago, I suddenly had the light bulb moment and this is a exclusive for you. They don't know themselves yet. So I'm thinking that what they need is not another online community, but they need boot camps.
Julia Freer Goldstein:We
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:need to get the biomaterials industry, up and running and we need to all get together this whole thing that you were saying being face to face in the same space together. That's what makes things really happen. so I've got this thought now that will bring all these amazing biomaterials companies from the U S from Europe, from Africa. There's some great stuff happening there. Some great seaweed stuff in Asia. We to bring them together. How do we do that? this is the bit that I'm working on now, right? So it shouldn't necessarily even be in europe It could be somewhere that people can get to is there a place we can get to by train? Or we have to do one in the us one in europe so that people aren't flying like crazy but then that I think is going to be Taking quite a bit of time to bring that together, but I do think We are now at the point in 2024 where we have a chapter on novel materials. It's not just about biomaterials. There's lots of other stuff happening in composites and you'll see that in the book, but we're at the point now where we can go bio. We can go Less toxic and people like you and I need to make it happen, right? There's no good just writing the book. We have to now execute the book
Julia Freer Goldstein:Yeah But I think one important thing too that we talk about is that not all Biomaterials are created equal and there's a lot of clarifying some of those definitions Oh, it's bio based. Therefore it's, oh, it meets all these like wonderful 10 criteria and not necessarily.
Cory Connors:I have to give you Paul a compliment because, you totally changed my mind on biomaterials. I was very skeptical. And then you said, what if we could recycle those? And I said, what? And, just having that mind shift of, these could be recyclable or reusable and circular, and to me, that just opened my eyes to a new possibility.
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:Yeah. I think that everybody under 30 working on biomaterials is working on recyclability. Yeah. They didn't know that they could be compostable or even say that's the only route they're going. we're creating new stuff out of biomass. Obviously it needs to be used again or recycled. They've come in with a new, I'm shocked to have to tell you. I said to a guy the other day, who's American? He's a bio entrepreneur, and I said. So, you're in your thirties, right, Exit? 927 I was like I was like, oh my goodness This is these guys and girls are out there doing this amazing stuff And they're sometimes i'm not kidding. They're in their early 20s. They've only just graduated I'm thinking about Zimri from Reon Materials in Texas now. He's like two years out of college, maybe. And he was at Biofabricate with his stand showing his amazing biomaterials, which are making guitar plectrums and straps. And I was just like, oh, I can't believe the youth, how much they've achieved already.
Julia Freer Goldstein:I know. I just recently, I was a judge at the, UW, University of Washington. Environmental innovation challenge and these teams of students are it's just amazing what they're doing. And some of them, and there are ones that are making films out of seaweed. And they're also those, the ones that these students did have a lot of holes in them. They're not quite ready for commercial use. but there's. There's films that are made for covering agriculture, like, how you have those big black plastic films over those fields of strawberries and whatnot, right? And they're making them from hemp waste, and they've got a film. I saw the samples. This looks like, this could really come to be. And these are all these really young students that are coming up with these things. And they're realizing, yeah, we can be entrepreneurs. we can invent new things and we don't need to wait until we're however many decades of our careers to do it.
Cory Connors:Yeah, said. Very true. And I agree. We need to look at the youth. The future is very bright for circularity, for packaging, for sustainability. I'm totally excited about that. So where do we buy the book? how do we get in touch with you both?
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:Hey where you could buy the book, so bookshop. org It's a great place to buy from it supports local bookshops we have the publisher's website, so if you google materials and sustainability you will end up at the rickledge website, which is our publisher but actually what's really crazy. It's everywhere. It's like barnes and nobly
Julia Freer Goldstein:it is you can order it from everywhere What I think we will do cory. I will give you a couple of links I'll give you a link for the publisher's website and for bookshop and it If people are used to buying their books at other places, they can find it there too.
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:Yeah.
Cory Connors:Local
Paul Foulkes-Arellano:bookshop. Go in and help the local bookshop out.
Cory Connors:and what about getting in touch with the two of you? what's the best way? LinkedIn?
Julia Freer Goldstein:Yeah, LinkedIn is good.
Cory Connors:LinkedIn. Our favorite, right, Paul? Yeah, for sure. We're big fans for a good reason. thank you both. This has been incredible. I can't wait to, to read your book in a physical copy this time. And, with your signatures in it, I'll be honored to have that copy. And, you're both inspirational to me as a, packaging professional, and I appreciate what you're doing. So keep up the good work.
Julia Freer Goldstein:Thanks. Great.
Cory Connors:Kari. Take care. Thank you.
