More Sustainable Plastic with Trei Johnson (Accredo PKG)

In this episode, Cory Connors welcomes Trei Johnson to discuss the future of plastic packaging and the challenges of recycling flexible materials. Trei shares his path from studying sustainability at Cornell to impactful roles at Unilever and Mars Wrigley before joining Accredo Packaging to lead its sustainability strategy. He highlights Accredo’s unique story as a family-owned company founded by Vietnamese immigrants and its commitment to operating with 100% wind power and developing recyclable packaging solutions.

Key Topics Discussed

• Trei’s career journey from Cornell to Unilever, Mars Wrigley, and Accredo Packaging
• How Accredo was founded and its family-run values that support long-term sustainability
• “Sustainable Packaging, Sustainably Produced” — what that motto means for Accredo
• Challenges in plastic recycling and how consumer education plays a key role
• Progress in store-drop flexible film recycling and regulatory momentum
• The growing consumer demand for compostable and bio-based plastics
• California’s stance on compostable materials and how policy impacts brand decisions
• Industry collaboration at events like SPC Boston and the importance of thought leadership
• Trei’s career advice for young professionals with sustainability degrees — combining broad environmental skills with functional expertise in R&D, marketing, or engineering
• The power of LinkedIn for career growth and building a professional brand

Resources Mentioned

• Accredo Packaging — Sustainable Packaging, Sustainably Produced
• API Group (Acredi Packaging’s parent organization)
• 7th Generation Recyclable Stand-Up Pouch
• Napa Recycling
• Sway
• Cruz Foam

Contact

Listeners can connect with Trei Johnson on LinkedIn for insights and industry collaboration opportunities.

Closing Thoughts

Cory and Trei discuss the promise and complexity of creating more sustainable plastics. They agree that true progress will come from collaboration across the value chain, policy alignment, and consumer engagement. Their conversation underscores that the future of packaging is not about a single solution but a diverse set of innovations driven by shared commitment to a cleaner planet.

Thank you for tuning in to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors!

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to Sustainable Packaging and Trei Johnson

01:12
Trey's Journey into Packaging and Sustainability

04:41
Accredo Packaging: A Unique Story

08:35
Sustainable Practices at Accredo

10:41
Challenges and Advancements in Plastic Recycling

13:11
The Future of Compostable Packaging

16:37
Advice for Aspiring Sustainability Professionals

keywords sustainable packaging, Trei Johnson, Accredo Packaging, recycling, compostable packaging, sustainability career, environmental impact, packaging industry, sustainability education, plastic waste

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/

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This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.

Transcript

0:07

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors presented by Atlantic Packaging. I'm your host, Cory Connors. In today's episode, I connected with my friend, Trei Johnson from Accredo Packaging. We talk about the challenges of plastic recycling and also Trei gives some great advice for young packaging pros on just getting started in the industry. Today's guest is my friend Mr. Trei Johnson, the Director of Sustainability at Accredo Packaging. How are you Trei? great. Thanks for having me on. been looking forward to doing this for a while and just got around to it. We finally connected in the right time zone so we could meet up and get this thing done. We've been talking about it for a couple of years now. So thank you for making time for us. I think your position and what you do for the industry is really important and people need to hear about what a Credo is doing. But you've got an impressive background, man. It's this really awesome, including time at Unilever and Mars and their packaging departments. What got you into packaging to begin with? Yeah, it's a great question. And it's been a blessing. I actually didn't know packaging was a field in itself. And so probably about three months before I actually started a packaging role. But I studied sustainability in college. In fact, it's probably one of the first cohort of students to actually shift from having a traditional natural resources degree to a more holistic sustainability degree that focused more on just the environmental sciences that focused on the social aspect of sustainability and also the corporate side of things. And that really broadened things out for me. And I know that there's a lot of students now who are taking on these sustainability degrees and are looking to figure out how do you take that into a corporate landscape. And so that's kind of what I've had to establish for myself. But after graduating or my senior year, actually, I attended a career fair that was focused on sustainability for the Ivy League universities. And I interviewed with Unilever and that's where I got my first role. out of college working for Unilever and they said, hey, you're going to get a blanket role. We don't know what it's going to be, but we love that you have a sustainability background and we want to hire you. So my first year out of college, I was working for Unilever in supply chain actually in Connecticut. And I got to do some sustainability projects, but I wanted something more sustainability oriented after that first year. And so I just went on the job board and typed in sustainability and some of the first roles that popped up for me were packaging sustainability roles and I didn't really know what that meant at the time, but I reached out to the manager, Melissa Craig. You might've met her probably at some sustainability events and still very active in the industry. And she said, hey, you've got a STEM background. You know, we'd love to have you. know, we know that you don't know the packaging yet, but we love to teach you. And all the people I ended up working with were traditional packaging engineers, more or less. So I got to learn the packaging. I taught them more of the sustainability stuff. Again, this was around the time that the Ellen MacArthur Foundation commitments were being announced and committed to by many organizations and it was just the perfect fit. That's great. Where'd you go to college, Trei? Cornell. What a great school. Wow. Made famous by Andy from the office, I believe. I'm kidding, of course. Yeah, what a awesome school. And I think you're right to be one of the first in sustainability is really kind of common in our industry because it's it's fairly new. It's a fairly new thing. Like you said, your school didn't even have that before. And now it's a, it's a huge thing. what, what kind of drew you to that? What was it? you have, always had an environmentally conscious life? Are you, you know, tell me more. It's a good question. Well, I grew up with 10 pets, 10 different unique pets, which is pretty unusual. and so I just loved animals growing up, spent a lot of time outdoors. And by the time I got to high school and my advisors were asking me, what do you want to study in college? I really didn't know. And so in doing research, I actually realized at that time and, you know, kind of late high school years that there were a lot of environmental concerns. there was a lot of environmental damage going on in the earth. And I said, Hey, you know, I have a lot of pets. I love spending time outdoors. This seems like something that I would want to commit myself to. Not only that, but I was a pretty curious kid growing up. I loved to experiment. I loved the different sciences. But I didn't like being in a lab all the time. I didn't like being in a confined environment. I love being outdoors. And so I wanted to do something where I could kind of combine some of my curiosities and passions and also not be so confined. That's what I felt like. That's great. Yeah, it makes sense. I think most of the people I interview have a love of the outdoors and, you know, pets bring you outdoors, right? You want to walk your dog. You want to run around the forest with your animals. I think that's, that makes a lot of sense. Well, let's talk about a credo. What, what does a credo do and what's your role there as a director of sustainability? Yeah, absolutely. Well, my career actually has a really unique story and I'll share it. And I think it was a great fit for me when I came here because I didn't come straight from Unilever. I actually was recruited to Mars Wrigley after a few years at Unilever. And part of the reason for that was just because Unilever was pretty advanced in their sustainability journey. And there were a lot of companies who had yet to kind of embark on their 2025 goals. And so I actually made the transition from Unilever to Mars, partly because I saw the opportunity to kind of help build a program up from scratch. And also I saw that film inflexibles were going to be an enormous challenge moving forward. And I want to be a part of the solution trying to solve that challenge. And I built up quite a lot of experience learning more about packaging at Mars, worked with great teams, a great packaging director there at Mars, William Singleton. and after about five years at Mars Wrigley, I decided to come down to a credo packaging and I thought it was a really great fit because Mars and a credo, they're both privately owned and they're both family owned companies as well. But what's unique about, yeah, yeah, very interesting. And I think it makes a lot of sense with sustainability because you do want to have a longer term approach. You know, families tend to have that generational kind of thinking to them and they're also private companies. So not as worried about. what investors are going to think about the decisions you're making that may not be traditional. I think those values are pretty common amongst those types of companies. And I wanted to continue to have those values. But what's unique about a credo is that it's actually founded by a Vietnamese family and they came to the U.S. during the fall of Saigon. So between taking a boat half the way there and the plane the half of the way there, they made it to the U.S. and there's 10 brothers. And by day they were working odd jobs. you know, things like newspaper boy or delivery man. And by night they would build a boat because what they knew in Vietnam was fishing, shrimp fishing. And so once over the course of many, many months, they built a boat, were able to go out and fish. And they went from being fishermen to actually owning their own fish stores and eventually restaurant. And from there, they realized that this was during the eighties, that there was a shortage of the actual bags. During this time, there weren't really any plastic bags. in the United States. They only had paper bags, ah primarily. they found a, happened to come across a man who knew how to produce these plastic bags. They flew to China, learned how to make the bags and they started producing, they basically brought an extruder, put it in the garage and started making plastic bags, not only for their restaurant, but all the restaurants in their city. Fast forward maybe about 10 years and they became the second largest producer of these plastic t-shirt bags as you would see them now at grocery stores and things of that nature. Yeah, I, yeah, yeah, it's quite the American dream story. And over the course of their time in America, they've just identified numerous opportunities to continue to innovate and provide value to the market. in 2015 was when Accredo was founded, which is one division of this company I'm kind of alluding to, but it's called API Group. And it has a number of different divisions, four different divisions. You've got Advanced Polybag, which is the plastic bag company. You've got Credo US, which is where I sit. sit here in Sugarland, Texas near Houston. You've got Credo Asia, which is located in Vietnam. And then you've got, we also have a paper bag company as well that we recently launched. Great. Sugarland. What's that near? You said Houston? Okay. Interesting. I'll have to come down there and see it. We've got a division down there, I think. uh we'd love to have you. Well, that's a really awesome Trei and your motto is sustainable packaging, sustainably produced. So can you tell us like what that means to you and to the team at Accredo? Yeah, absolutely. And this kind of partly jumps into how I ended up here at Acreto and part of what my role is as well. And Acreto was founded 15 years ago. And from the date that it was founded, it was founded with 100 % wind electricity. And so from the point that the company was actually established, the owners and the family knew that they wanted to have an underpinning of sustainability. Not only that, but Acreto was also the first company to release a recyclable stand-up zippered pouch with 7th Generation back in 2016. And so by having me here, part of my job is to kind of formalize a lot of the strategy. So previously we had a lot of one-off sustainability projects, and even a lot of the brands we work with now, they have lot of initiatives and interests, but they don't necessarily have a formalized strategy. So part of my job is really, really being robust about understanding what our footprint is. and communicating that both internally and externally. Another part of my role is helping our customers also understand their strategy, what the pros and cons of different materials are and educating. And then the third aspect that is also really important is kind of looking out and understanding the landscape of consumers externally, regulatory, and helping the business understand and navigate risks and opportunities so that we can move forward and continue to grow. I know you do that by going to some of the shows that I go to. That's where we met. And I think that's very effective use of your time is being, you've always been a thought leader in the industry. And I think that's how we do it. Right. We, we go and we learn from other people. That's smart. Yeah, you learn from other people and you combine it with what you know and then you create something new and try to try to push things forward. I love it. That's exactly right. Well, let's talk a little bit about recycling in the plastics industry. I know this has been a real challenge for many years. know, there's things that are easy to recycle like aluminum and paper, but plastic has been kind of more difficult for a lot of reasons. But I think there's a lot of advancements happening in that space. Can you tell us... What are some of the good things that are happening to make plastic more recyclable or easily recycled? Absolutely. I think there's a lot of challenges and even for me, I'm constantly reminding my family that flexible plastics need to go back to the store to drop them off. I think that's one of the bigger challenges with flexibles. But I tend to be pretty optimistic about just life in general. So I think that recycling rates for, I would argue all materials only have room to grow up from here, especially with legislation supporting. having more recycling stations, more store drop-off stations, and more of the consumers out there kind of wanting and demanding that we get these materials out of the environment. ah And so I tend to be optimistic in that sense. There are certainly challenges, but I feel like the momentum is swinging in the positive direction for recycling of all plastics and even other materials as well, and even compostable materials. I agree. Totally agree that that things are moving in the right direction. I felt like, and I don't know if you've had this feeling too at the SPC, we were both at the sustainable packaging coalition conference in Boston. Just, uh, was that last week? Jeez. And, um, it felt like things were finally starting to move in the right direction. Um, did you get kind of that sense, that feeling? Yeah, in some ways I, I, I do feel like things are moving in the right direction. I think that partly it's due to regulatory environment, kind of pushing things forward for the first time in what seems like many, many years at least. But I also understand, I feel like there's some frustration with, with there not being one solution. I feel like as an industry, we've kind of settled in this place where There are different solutions for different applications, and some people feel frustrated with that, and some people feel empowered by it. I think I'm more the latter in that I do feel like there are different solutions for different applications and for different products, and they all have to grow. The pathway for all of these has to grow. And at end of the day, I think the consumers will decide what they want to choose. That's it. They're going to vote with their wallet. They're going to say, I don't like this or I love this. Yeah. That's, that's so simple. You mentioned compostable packaging and I'm fascinated by that and how it's kind of had its ups and downs and things like that. I'd love to know your thoughts on compostable plastic packaging. Yeah, absolutely. I try to stay up to date on the research, especially that McKinsey puts out these reports on consumers and sustainable packaging. And over the past, you know, at least the past few years, it's been pretty resounding that consumers love compostable plastics and they love bio-based plastics. Likely because it's just very clear and straightforward to them. They don't want plastic waste and they have an idea that compostables are better for the environment, which makes complete sense. And I think that brands follow consumers at the end of the day. What the consumers want, brands want to give the consumers. My concern is just with California not seeming to be super supportive of compostable plastics due to some of the regulations around their compatibility with organic compost. And I do know that there's some challenges there. And I think that if California continues to not be supportive of, super supportive or even tolerant of compostable plastics in regular compost streams, then Obviously, we know if California has a hard time with things, then it's hard for brands to make decisions on packaging without having California on board. So I would say that's probably the one big concern that I have. I was encouraged by some of the research that came from SPC last week about compost access rates and things of that nature increasing in the US and things being better accounted for and better measured, which is the tough thing with compost because if someone takes something and puts it in their backyard, mean, How can we track that? You don't know, right? Yeah. Olga Kachuk gave a great presentation on, on Compostables and, yeah, her insights, their work on, on that information gathering has really been impressive. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, I think, I think I agree with you on that point on the fact that consumers like compostable packaging. think it's, it's cool. I think it can work. It has proven to work to be effective materials like Napa and sway and cruise foam. These, these things are, are working and consumers are happy to re to, to receive something that could be potentially composted in their backyards. So Yeah, we'll see what happens with this California law. It could be a total game changer. Yeah, absolutely. So what's next with you? Any big shows coming up? Anything exciting that you've got on the horizon? Yeah, a lot more travel coming up. for any listeners, I would love to connect with you guys at any of these events that either I or Cory or both of us tend to be at. But coming up, I've got Paper and Plastics Recycling Conference in Chicago next week. And then, OK, nice, nice. And then we've got APR in Salt Lake City coming up. And then finally, Flex Forum, which will be in New Orleans. Okay, so not too far from home for you there. That's nice. You're in a good spot there to travel to all these events, I think it sounds like. Yeah, mean, central in the US, mean, easy flights pretty much all the way around and, you know, some things are driving distance. Yeah, that is nice. Could you drive to New Orleans or is that too far? It's about five, five and a half. It's a little bit far for me, but yeah. Well, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you and the team there? Absolutely, the best thing to do is to reach me on LinkedIn. I always check my LinkedIn messages and I try to reply to as many as I can. So that would be the best way to get in touch with us. Well thanks Trei. Anything else you want to tell us about before we close out the show? Yeah, actually, there was one thing I know one thing that I've actually been reached out to on many occasions is that there's many other younger professionals that are coming out with the sustainability degrees that are having a hard time landing in particularly large companies and even brands that asked me for advice about how they should go about doing that. And I think the one thing that I've learned kind of in retrospect over the course of my career, it's relatively short career, less than 10 years going from being a student to leading a sustainability at an organization is that most important thing is that even though sustainability may be a bread and butter, you should learn to dovetail that with a particular focus of a department because sustainability tends to be quite broad. So if you're coming in as a sustainability expert, all that is just relevant to whichever department that you are actually seeking to be a part of. So that looks very different for a marketing function looks very different for an R &D function or an engineering function, which all these functions probably have sustainability roles or sustainability focus within them. However, if you really learn to, even though sustainability may be your bread and butter, to kind of dovetail it with whatever focus or whatever department you're actually seeking or whichever department you have a skill set in, that will help enhance your marketability to that function rather than coming in as an expert in sustainability, which is maybe too broad to fit you into a particular role. So I didn't want to share that just because in reflection over my experience and how my career has gone, that's been a really important focus, just tying my sustainability to the packaging function to help make it more tangible for companies. That's great advice, Trei. And I think you and I get reached out to a lot by, by students. And I love that part of this job is getting to mentor people that are coming up through the ranks and say, you know, say, Hey, what if you tried this? Have you done this yet? Are you posting on LinkedIn? You know, things like that, because, because we're all our own brand, right? We're all our own person. And, I think if people know who you are, you're going to have a lot better chance of getting hired somewhere. Right. Ha ha ha. I would say a hundred percent and that LinkedIn probably for me was probably the game changer. mean, that's how I, you know, got found out from Unilever going to Mars. And that's how I found my role here at a Credo is just through LinkedIn. And even from the beginning, before I even got to Unilever, LinkedIn was just a huge focus for us in our, in our beginnings of our career journey coming out of Cornell and making sure that as many fields as you can fill out on there, they're filled out and that they're robust and interesting. tells a story. I don't know if you feel the same Cory about LinkedIn, but I mean it's been it's been huge for me. It's been a game changer for me. It's absolutely changed my life. mean, I wouldn't be speaking to you today without that connection. Uh, and without kind of that background of social media, know, tick tock and then LinkedIn and then the podcast and all of these things have just, it's just like a ball rolling down a hill. You just kind of pick up this additional thing that you do or you, know about a great point. Awesome, awesome. All right, sir. Thanks for joining me. Appreciate you and I'll see you in Chicago next week. All right. right.