Sustainable Packaging
Industry Experts discuss all the new materials and ways that packaging can be more sustainable and how we can do our parts to help recycle and reuse. Sustainable Packaging is and will continue to affect us all in our daily lives. We have lots of fun and get down to the real data of what's working to help our planet!
Sustainable Packaging
Good for people and planet with Pregis (Eva Caspary / Clint Smith)
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How can packaging help the planet and people?
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Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors,
Brodie Vander Dussen:and I'm Brodie Vander Dussen. Cory Connors: Excited to and amazing people on the podcast today from Pregis. We've got Ava Kaspari and Clint Smith. Ava is the Sustainable Packaging Specialist and Clint is the Director of Global Sustainability. Welcome to you both.
Eva Caspary:Hi, so happy to be here.
Clint Smith:Hey, Cory. Hey, Brody. Thanks for having us.
Brodie Vander Dussen:Absolutely. I was saying this a little bit earlier, but I am really excited about today's episode. I even I have had a lot of chances to talk about sustainable packaging and just the impact that sustainability can have on the world. oftentimes those conversations really revolve around the direct impact on the environment, both for better, for worse. but one thing I think that we collectively as an industry maybe don't talk about as much as I would like is the social impact of some of these things and programs and, how they really do go hand in hand, in my opinion, with our sustainability efforts that it's all. All together. It's so intertwined and ingrained. And so I think One of the reasons I was really excited about this is because Ava, you and Clint have had such a great experience, at PreGIS, and you guys have some really cool programs going on and have had such a massive impact. before I get too excited about this, let me backtrack a little bit. Ava, Clint, for those who don't know you, maybe can you give us just a brief background as to who you guys are and what you do at PreGIS?
Eva Caspary:Absolutely. Yeah. my name is Ava. I am Corey already said it's sustainable packaging specialist. I'm German originally, so I grew up in Germany and did my undergrad in Germany, and then I came over to Louisiana, of all places, and got my PhD in chemical engineering. it's been a really wild ride. I live in Atlanta now, and I work for Pregis, which has been absolutely my favorite job ever. I've really been looking for a company that has a purpose that I can, stand behind. And Pregis is really good at that, and I love that. The people I work with and what we stand for. So what I do day in and day out is a mixture of a lot of things. A lot of times I help our customers, meet their sustainability goals with our solutions and packaging. But I also help our partners understand how exactly we think about sustainability and how are these, where, how we can think about that in all different ways. Because It is not a 1 size fits all thing. Yeah, and I should do some internal training too, which I really enjoy. What about you, Clint?
Clint Smith:Yeah, so similar, Corey's fantastic job of introducing my title. next question typically that I get is what does that mean? global sustainability and so when you think about, pretty just, predominantly going to be North American based also with a strong presence in Europe. And, in a small presence in Asia, but, really working across our businesses. And so we've got a strong protective business. We've got, a strong coatings business and, in a growing films business, a flexible films. but really, my background is in packaging engineering. Grew up, but just outside of Columbia, South Carolina. my grandfather was a dairy farmer there, thinking about just some of the things that shaped me and influence me. growing up, certainly sustainability is 1 of them. I didn't really know it at the time. but just a lot of the principles really have been ingrained in me and attributed that to my grandparents on my dad's side. both of those grandparents lived through the depression, so it was a waste not want not type of mentality and just, a lot of influence from them. on me, as I grew up, I'm thinking about how I got into packaging. And a lot of the principles about, minimization and using, as little as possible, the right types of materials possible to be as efficient as possible. Just. Probably because of my background really resonated with me as far as the major goes and. Actually, I was thinking about my dad. let's call he might be a touch a little bit of a hoarder, but he keeps kept all my elementary school types, papers and all that kind of stuff. And so he brought, he brought a stack of that to me about a month ago and I started flipping through and I found a paper that I'd written in. The 4th grade around conservation, and so luckily, I think I got an S or an E or even at that time. It was an A, but I got a good grade on the paper, but it was just cool to be able to have that, that document I was appreciative of my dad's saving all that kind of stuff, but fun to go back and look at that and just see the background how I got into sustainability at pre just through packaging. And I'm pretty just I'm focused really on the commercial side of sustainability, working with, fantastic people like our innovation headquarters, the commercial side of that. So the packaging engineering lab that all reports up through sustainability and through me. and really, 1 of the things that we get asked a lot is, packaging engineering, why does that fall under sustainability? And really, as you think about how we think about packaging, it's similar to the background and the principles, from a development engineering perspective. that we apply, to, to how we think about packaging it. Previous. And so just makes a ton of sense. The number 1 thing we can do is eliminate waste and that's through the performance of our products. And so that's. really what I'm focused on working with our engineering teams, working with on the education piece, working with our associations. as far as education and advocacy in the marketplace, and then with customers and, where they've got needs, if we've got a product or a solution, work with our channel partners with our teams to. To bring those to market if we don't going back and working with the engineering teams to how do we develop it? So it's it's certainly been a fun ride, over the course of my time with Pregis
Cory Connors:amazing. Nice work Yeah, Pregis has really been an innovator and a leader in the sustainable packaging space for many years i'd love to know What? Sustainability means to Pregis why is it such a an important part of your packaging company?
Clint Smith:Yeah, absolutely. the way we think about sustainability is, I touched on a little bit of it a second ago, but really thinking around, really, how does the packaging perform? And so we frame up our tenants are key tenants of sustainability and protect, preserve and inspire. and protect is really about how that packaging performs, and so for our protective business, for example, it's. How do those products, work to eliminate damage? And when we think about that, it's, using the right types of materials, whether it's plastic or whether it's papers, the right amounts of those materials to perform and whatever that application might be, it could be, cushioning, shipping plates and glasses. It could be. shipping, automotive parts or car doors or electronics or something like that. But really, how do we design that packaging to reduce waste to eliminate damages? So that material works every time. We also think about from a sustainability perspective, the introspective look at it and really, what can we do? How can we do our part as an organization as a company? And that's under our preserve pillar. A preserve tenant and thinking about how do we manufacture those products, generating as little waste as possible using clean energy where we can, just thinking about, from a manufacturing process. how do we become more efficient? and if we're generating scrap, how do we use that scrap or, at the worst case, how do we get it recycled versus going to landfill? So we've got some goals and some things around that. And then the inspire piece, that's our 3rd kind of tenant there. And that's really about people advocacy and education. whether that's, employees, whether that's the communities that we work and serve in, or whether that's, the greater global audience or the greater global good. certainly want to make sure we do our part there
Cory Connors:first time. I read that. I thought it said perspire and I thought that's what sustainability is right. It's hard work.
Brodie Vander Dussen:I like it. I think that's so important. Even when you talked a little bit about how to minimize our impact minimize, maybe that means minimizing the actual physical packaging that we have, but it's really important to be able to balance, I think, performance and sustainability. I'm curious, Ava, how you have seen that work out well, how do you, how does Pregis , how do you think that we should, be balancing performance with sustainability?
Eva Caspary:I love that question. because I think honestly, it is not a competition or a balance to me. It is part of sustainability. It goes hand in hand for me to have a sustainable package. It has to perform first and foremost. when I think about packaging, I don't just think about the materials and what can happen with them at the end of life. I think about how is this packaging even designed in the 1st place. When I get, let's say I order a blender online and I get it shipped to my doorstep directly, and it arrives broken and I have to get it reshipped , there's so much more environmental impact associated with damages than the environmental impact that we would get from what the packaging is made out of. Not that's not important, it's very important, but we have to think about all of that. So when we talk about performance. That is part of sustainability at the very core for it. And that's why I think it's so important for us at Pregis to have the IQ center where our packaging engineers are sitting and where we really think about packaging design from the ground up. And then, of course, we still work at making our materials as sustainable as possible. So we have our 4R framework. Pretty sure that you've heard some hours in this podcast before it's the same packaging podcast. I'm sure so the typical ones it's material reduction, recyclable, recycled content and renewable wherever possible. and so that means that we continuously work on identifying new opportunities for, packages. Or packaging materials, new opportunities to improve what we currently have. We always look to have more recycled content and our solutions, but we never sacrifice performance because that's the very 1st thing that you have to start with.
Clint Smith:Yeah, it reminds me kind of thinking back to 1 of my early courses and a professor at Clemson. Sometimes, from a packaging perspective, we like to, hey, there's all these things we can do and, build ourselves up that we're going to do all this fancy, engineering and work and have all these, all these different objectives and efforts that go into it. But, at the end of the day. for any plump out there, if you remember the name Leroy door, he's a professor from back in the 90s. So I'm dating myself a little bit here, but, he made it quite simple. He's packaging really comes down to 2 things. It's the highest degree of protection at the lowest overall cost and didn't really define what either of those 2 minutes. whether that was, the cost as far as, financially, what the packaging material or the packaging cost, or whether that's, what is the cost of the environment challenged us to think about what could that mean from both aspects? And it's 1 of those things that certainly resonates with me. and I think we see it through, through our company, at least. As far as, how we think about, packaging performance, and then the trade offs between the highest degree of performance for the application, which there's a million of them out there and then, at what cost and whether that's environmental or financial, they both have to, you got to find the right right intersection there for your particular application or organization.
Eva Caspary:And actually there is a major opportunity still to help customers understand that connection. We're all so worried about environmental impact, we all want to reduce our carbon emissions, we want to maybe even get to net zero, we want to reduce our landfill waste. And one of the major levers we can pull is think about how are we actually packaging our stuff and does it arrive correctly? Does it arrive intact? So it's really exciting to sit with customers and help them understand the, just the holistic impact of packaging and how it can have such an impact because oftentimes people don't even think about it, so it's really great to see. Being able to educate and help and support out in the field that you can make a change
Cory Connors:and we often talk about the bottom line and the green bottom line. There's no reason. These can't these things can't be both positively impacted by a move to more sustainable packaging.
Speaker 5:Okay,
Cory Connors:I think we wanted to talk about this new line of packaging that you have the inspire line. Can we talk about that? Clint? Can you tell us what, what brought it about? What makes it different? What's why is it different from other materials?
Clint Smith:Yeah, absolutely. our inspire branded line of packaging materials, but quick little history detour if we go back. To a prior role, a couple of prior roles of mine, but actually I was a product manager at the time going back to 2015, oh man, almost 10 years. this covid years really throwing me off as far as like the scale of the numbers there. But yeah, back in 2015, it was 2015, 2016, really focused on, quite frankly, consumer experience and kind of that whole unboxing experience. phenomena was really starting to take off at the time, social media platforms were evolving. YouTube was a little bit earlier I will say it was just younger. Right? It wasn't necessarily in its infancy, but, you're getting all these different influencers and everybody taking videos and pictures of their packaging and. really inspire started from, that kind of that focus on that unboxing phenomenon and then really tying in this emerging or this evolving purpose driven consumer. And so 1 of the things we were looking for was to create a brand and create a series of products that had together a couple of things. Number 1, it started with our inflatable cushioning. We call it hybrid cushioning. but it's the inflatable cushioning that, inflates on demand, wherever the customers using it, but it started in that product category. That was the category. I was the product manager for and. so number 1 was protective, I had to work had to protect, for eCommerce applications. The other thing we were really looking at was, sustainability. And in that 1, when we 1st started out, it was this move to really the kickoff of recyclable, plastics and recyclable type, inflatables. And so that the store drop off program. how do we make this material at that time? our customers were saying sustainability to us meant. Make it recyclable. They're still saying that a lot today, but that was the attribute that they wanted to see, at that time. We had, protection. We have a recyclable package. And then, the other thing that, like I mentioned, we were really looking at was consumer experience. So different colors. so we launched, the product with, a blue color. We called it water blue. And I'll get to why in a minute. We also had, pink and we had black, materials. Those were the colors that the customer, our customers were saying these are the ones we wanted to go with. and so then we had this, this whole phenomenon around the early launch was in cosmetics and beauty and into the purpose driven companies, which were marketing towards purpose driven consumers. And so we thought, can we tie in something from a philanthropic or the social aspect to the, to this brand and to this packaging and. So we went out, we actually did quite a bit of extensive research, just looking at a lot of different charitable organizations out there. If you can think of the space, we probably did some research into it. So whether it was, supporting, cancer, whether it was supporting, veterans causes, whether it was supporting, animal causes, stuff like that. we looked across a lot of different, a lot of different organizations out there and. Yeah. 1 of the things we settled on was water is universal to everybody. And so we looked at quite a lot of the different water organizations out there as well. And we really wanted to find, something that we could grow with an organization. We could grow with and 1 that. For us, quite frankly, we didn't know what we had. So we knew we had something that we felt very passionate about and a product that we felt the market would accept. But a lot of the big NGOs and the charitable organizations out there, they were, they wanted a minimum donation, more than 4 figures, more than 5 figures types of money. And. For us, in our infancy here, we didn't really know. And so I had a, some history with, a newer water filtration, organization called and I knew their founder pretty well. And I just, his name is bill coble. And I talked to bill and said, hey, this is what we're thinking. what, I don't know if we're going to give you, 100 bucks, or if we're going to give you a 1000 bucks, but I think we've got something here and. His response was, you know what? It doesn't matter if you give us if you give us 5 or you give us 50, 000, I can promise you, we'll put it to good use. And so that's how we got the partnership together. And then, once we had that, we were able to bring the product line to market. And I've been able to grow it since across, across multiple types of packaging materials now. So it's not just hybrid cushioning. It's also, there's also a paper inspired product line that we've got. There's also an inflatable non inflatable. There's a poly mailer. the poly meters are in that particular product category as well. Our paper mailers. just 2 years ago, we're added to that product category as well. So all the in the stock ever tech mailers now count towards inspire and we continue to see more and more demand for these types of products today.
Cory Connors:a percentage of that revenue goes to that charity that we're
Clint Smith:wonderful. Yeah, you're right. Corey, we've, we're a part of an organization called 1 percent for the planet. And if you're not familiar with them, what they do is they connect businesses with the charitable organizations and, really serve to audits a strong word, but serve to validate really the audit, right? We've got to be very transparent with them about our contributions and show receipts of that. They're going to Zima that we're actually. doing what we say we're doing. so it's a great organization to help us, further enhance the, just the strength behind what we're doing and the inspire brand based on that 1 percent for the planet organization. Nice work.
Brodie Vander Dussen:That's amazing. I got to hear 1, I think that's just phenomenal. And I think there's a lot of kudos to the amount of research that went into that. It sounds like a very. yeah, I'm sure that feels really good to have picked one and is, been partners for so long. Ava, I think the last time we talked was right after you came back from visiting, on a trip with Uzima. Can you tell me a little bit about your experience? How did that go? What did that look like?
Eva Caspary:How many hours do you have? I'm very happy to talk to you for a very long time about this. Yeah. it was life changing and maybe in a little bit in a little way also life ruining because it was just incredible to see the impact that these water filters that we are donating towards that how much of an impact they can have on a person's life. And it's hard to put that into words because it might feel a little bit far away, but when you get to see that firsthand, it's just incredible how affected a family is when they don't have access to clean water. So we did a lot of different things. We talked, we, we went into, people's houses and saw what a water filter there can make a difference in their lives. Now, they don't have to either buy expensive clean water or use other ways to clean their water. First, for example, boiling it. so they have this water filter. It now provides them with clean water that they can. Cook with, wash with, help, wash the babies with, all those things. It was just an incredible thing to see. But more than that, we've done other things, too. We saw, actually, a bunch of disaster areas where there was also a donation made with, with these water filters. And so it's not just people day in and day out, but also when there is a general need or specific need, that's where we can really help, do that. And it's actually not just somewhere far away, like in Kenya, it can happen in our backyard too. So when we, for example, in the Southeast saw Hurricane Helene and the destruction that it brought in the North Carolina area, we were able to contribute to water filters being deployed over there too. So it does, it might feel far away when you think about Kenya, but it can be in your backyard. But the thing that was really just fascinating and interesting for me was that before I started working for Pregis, I had maybe a bit of a cynical or jaded view about corporate social responsibility initiatives, and even Brody, before I went, we talked about me going and you told me to read Poisonwood Bible, and it was a great book to read. I was feeling. I don't know if skeptical, I wouldn't go as far as saying skeptical, but I really wanted to see firsthand what kind of an impact it can make and to see not just how the people that work with. It's just helping another person.
Brodie Vander Dussen:I think that's amazing. we had that conversation in Chicago, where both of us were at lunch, just getting emotional about the idea of, a true impact, and what a complete 180 from our previous conversation before you went of, really talking through what is, what we thought about, corporate social responsibility organizations and, the authenticity of it. And, Right. performance versus truly giving and truly trying to make an impact. so I'm really excited to hear about your experience. I know I, leave it to me to recommend a book. If anyone knows, I read a lot. I'm always recommending to anybody, but, yeah, I think you were saying something about your experience coming back. You want to talk a little bit about maybe like your experience. how, maybe your perspective have shifted.
Eva Caspary:Yeah, I'm happy to do that. I think one of the things that I want to add on top of that too is that I talked at the very beginning of our podcast about, loving working for Brijes and it's because of the people and the culture. We were able to go on this Kenya trip together, that was not a Brijes sponsored trip. we went as private citizens and paid our way to go and see what the impact is there. And It was colleagues of Prejus, my boss, was with me, and we were able to just connect in a way, in a human way, it really helped me even more understand how important it is to work for a company that truly cares. And have people in it that, that truly care. And that is one of the things that I really saw that this is not just a farce. This is not just a, Hey, we can put a nice little logo somewhere and somebody can buy it and make us feel good. Since I work with the commercial side, I say this to my customers a lot because it's true. This is a turnkey opportunity for you to take credit for our work, but I feel confident and comfortable to say that because I've seen firsthand. People's lives changed. I've had people thank me. Honestly, it made me feel a bit uncomfortable because I didn't make the filters. yes, I did fly all the way over to Kenya, but I didn't, I do so little. And there's so many people who do so much, but the amount of impact it can have on their lives, not just because now they have clean water, but also because now they don't have to pay for things, and can use the money otherwise. I think we made a calculation and seen that it makes about a 250 impact, one filter, and that might not sound like a lot, but when you go, about 1 a day, then that actually makes a huge impact. And I think I'm rambling a little bit here, but it's only because I'm so excited about how real this all was. And. being able to not just use that somewhere all the way over in Kenya, but also in our own backyard, contributing. I think Clint, how much was it now? A 1Million dollars of contribution so far. that pre just has contributed to separate.
Clint Smith:Yeah, the program since its inception and really. I think about 2016 was really the 1st year that we had any types of sales on the product line or the product brand. And in that year, I went back and looked, We contributed 960. in the grand scheme of things, we weren't lighting the world on fire in, in year 1, no pun intended on anything there, but literally it was, it's true to Bill's word. He's you know what? We'll take that 960 and we'll put it to good use. and with that, people were able to get clean water and it went through some of the stats, with 1 filter returning on impact really about 250 dollars worth of, annual revenue, not revenue, but just cost that's avoided whether that's from doctor's visits or buying medicines or going out and having to buy clean water or going out and having to buy wood quite frankly to boil your water or. What's not counted in there is the impact from people actually being able to go to work 'cause they're not sick. Or kids being able to go to school and get an education. for us, when we're thinking about it, one of the cool things that Ava was able to see is this is really actually helping break the cycle of poverty.
Speaker 5:Yeah. And
Clint Smith:so to think about, how we're able to just start small and when I say small 2016, call it a thousand bucks to now we're consistently contributing over $200,000 a year just. from contributions generated from, sales of the inspire product category. To me, that's a cool thing. And as I mentioned there, yeah, we crossed over the 1Million dollar, contribution line, early last year. steaming past that and just, it's cool to see also just. The, customers, we have this kind of whole concept in our head around who's the ideal customer that, this is going to work for, when we're building out the program, but to see, quite frankly, just B2B businesses. Adapt this product as well, and, 1 of the things we didn't think about was how, the good behind it, aligns with other companies, the other companies missions and a lot of them have, water missions. and so it's cool to see that and just to hear, I've had people tell me, hey, I've got about packaging. I want, I wanted to do more than just protect. it's pretty cool that it can also give back to people as well. So that's been rewarding to hear that as well.
Eva Caspary:Yeah, it's true and another thing I really loved was, you were talking about breaking the cycle of poverty. I really saw how it wasn't a. It's honestly like the old adage to teach a man to fish and give a man a fish or whatever. Obviously, I know only the German version as you can tell. But I saw how much education was part of the process of handing over water filters. There was talk about what's happening with personal hygiene, why we care about dirty water, and dirty water doesn't have to look dirty for it to be bad for you. And so this breaking the cycle of poverty is not just because of a donation, but also because they're empowering these folks to be better about, about health, that they might not have. Previously known about and educate the rest of their family, maybe the rest of their village around these things. And that can really have a ripple effect that you can't even measure in dollars.
Brodie Vander Dussen:That's so true. I think the more I sit here and think about the impact that an organization like that can have, the, it's just dominoes almost all the way down, generationally too. one person breaks outta the poverty line and that next generation benefits from it, and then that next generation benefits from that. it's. The ripple effect, it just gets greater and greater the more you think about it and the potential. we'll definitely include a link to Zima if anyone wants to learn more about them or wants to work with them directly. but what is, what's next for Inspire? What's next for this line? what are you guys excited about?
Clint Smith:So this one builds off of, actually, we had eight people go last year to Kenyon. One of them just so happened to be one of our category managers. And if you're out there and you think about, like, how do I maybe influence people within the organization to do your own thing? You know what? I found that influencing the category managers can go a little bit of a long way here. But, yeah, we've actually got 1 that went with us. And so he's going to bring inspire product brand into his product category as well. So just, it's cool to see, that happening that's going to happen. Actually, in our Intellipaat product family. That's our place when you think about, cushioning anything about protection, certainly, a very high degree of protection. but it's cool to see also just help, through the trip and 1 of the things that it really resonated with Jason. There was just. the ability to do more. And it's also really rewarding to work for an organization that encourages us to take some chances to try some different things and to do more. And so to have that ability for him to go out and try something new with that product category, but excited to see where that goes with our Intellipaq inspired branded products as well. So that'll be something a little bit different out there.
Brodie Vander Dussen:Love it. Can't wait.
Cory Connors:So other than buying these amazing products from one of your favorite partners Landsberg what's the other ways that people can get in touch with you starting with Ava? What's a good method?
Eva Caspary:so you can always go to my linked in. I am, chronically online. So I'm always to be reached over there. And then we really encourage folks to go, get in contact with our IQ, our innovation headquarters, because, like I said, that's where the, where everything starts. If you have any questions, any, issues, that's where we would go. And, I'll send you a website that you can link. there
Clint Smith:yeah, so I would say similar on LinkedIn. I'm probably. I might not be quite as active as Eva. I wouldn't use the term chronically online for me, but I'm online quite a bit. So certainly LinkedIn is 1 way to reach out to me. and then, certainly through, through, through, Pregis, as well. email address, fairly simple, csmith at pregis. com. A little bit easier than Ava's, Casperi, email address, but yeah, you can get in touch with either one of us or anybody from Pregis or Landsberg, and we can get you connected.
Brodie Vander Dussen:Yeah, highly recommend a trip to the IQ Center, too, out in Chicagoland. I got to go last year. Maybe the year before, stunning it, my, I think Ava, I took a thousand pictures and was like, what if I did this? I could do this. This is cool. I didn't know that you guys did this. and so you'll leave with a lot of work to do, but it's really cool worth
Eva Caspary:it. Great to have you there. And I, yeah, you took a lot of pictures. I did.
Cory Connors:Thank you both. Appreciate you.
Eva Caspary:Thank you so much.
