Group Lead, Ved Krishna
When it comes to thinking about sustainability – and more specifically, sustainability goals around plastic reduction, we knew that Sander Defruyt, the Lead of the New Plastics Economy Initiative at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation was the person to talk to. Sander took such a systems approach to all
0:00 – global supply chain um and yeah quite quickly um Plastics and plastic...
hello hello I’m so happy today to have sander the uh the lead of new Plastics economy initiative at Ellen Maur Foundation uh thank you sander for joining the conversation yeah my pleasure great I’m going to start with this title that you have the lead of new plastic economy initiative it’s a pretty pretty mouthful of a title and I’m sure there is a
12:00 – industry and a major industry players um you know again on packaging...
right like every single packaging unit is just a few grams of plastic with pretty much you know zero value in and of itself um plus they are spread over almost every household on this planet so the whole economics of bringing that back into a supply chain and circulating that is is way more challenging than let’s say for phones or cars whatever whe
24:00 – it's really um design of systems products you know packaging materials like...
leasing products what about reuse models what you know completely different business models um so yeah what what does the Circ economy mean I mean the easiest way to describe it um is always to kind of compare it to the linear economy right if you just look at today’s economy you try to Dy draw that on on on a piece of paper in a diagram it’s just
36:00 – I'm now talking plastic and packaging industry and uh where a lot...
in our in our view in our face but many times we ignore the process but uh you know as people in in the foundation I think as far as I’ve interacted with you you go into significant depth so how do you see that and how does one overcome this kind of challenge of process uh and not just product yeah I think picking up what you said at at at the star
49:00 – plastic polymer you know you just replace it with a biodegradable polymer...
why uh that cross value chain is is a collaboration is crucial like how can you work with your suppliers with your peers the rest of the value chain um together because that allows to to really change the system a nice example here is uh is reuse models right where if you especially the the returnable packaging that goes back to the manufacturer fo
61:00 – for some products where trying to design a more sustainable recyclable packaging...
happen and for both of these look at you know what what is a solution to go for here right and do we go for the the the compostables with the benefits you mentioned of you know easily go with the food Etc um or do we go because another thing to say for catering is also that um you know it’s more easy to do reuse right because you they’re not taking
73:00 – recycling packaging and you not just plastic packaging actually most most packaging...
importance you know what is the overall need and then you design as per need rather than thinking I’m just replacing the toothpaste or the toothpaste tube in this case and and look at it more as you know how should people be keeping their teeth clean which is so interesting and you know this came to my mind okay let’s let’s switch gears a little bi
85:00 – know everything comes in packaging right big big big three solutions I...
would love to have scale in the next four to five years what would those be and uh and and yeah tell us more about you know choose three and tell us uh how you would like them to scale Ah that’s a really difficult one um yeah because you obviously use packaging for everything from toothpaste to food to TVs to you know everything comes in packaging
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