From the Desk of Alan Blake
This is a great question – one which I ask myself each and every day that I support PAC Next initiatives: from the time I worked at P&G, and signed our company up as a founding member of PAC Next in 2011, to this very day as a “semi-retired” independent consultant working as PAC Next Director USA. What always rings true for me is PAC Next’s vision of “A World without Packaging Waste”.
Over the past 10 years or so we’ve seen a huge step-change in corporate and government engagement around the circular economy, and the desire to do something about packaging (in particular plastic) waste and ocean debris. Companies have declared 2025 and 2030 goals for reduction, reuse, recycled content, recyclable and compostable packaging, and are signing up for Plastics Pacts supported by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy. In fact, PAC is an implementation partner for the Canada Plastics Pact (CPP), with our CEO Jim Downham serving on the Advisory Council. PAC is at the table and representing you.
So back to the question “What’s in this for me?” and it’s simple really: PAC Next is committed to the vision and journey in partnership with ALL of our members to find circular solutions for ALL packaging materials and types that eliminate packaging waste. We do our utmost to live up to this promise by staying connected, especially during these trying Covid times. I’m particularly proud of our PAC team for delivering 13 webinars in 13 weeks in spring 2020, and for the continued success of our webinar program (most recently focused on US and Canadian EPR).
I should also highlight our PAC Connected newsletters for which we welcome guest articles, blogs and member news. We also have our online events such as our recent PAC Disruptors Summit in June.
Importantly, I want to bring particular focus to the Packaging Innovation Pathways PIP360 benchmarking and database tool www.pacpip360.com The launch of this easy-to-use tool this past January 2021 reflected an outstanding collaborative effort from our Leadership Council and the PAC Next team. And, everyone recognizes that, as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) this is only the beginning in developing a tool that will compliment and support our members in achieving their CSR and CPP goals and reporting. For many of our PIP360 early adopters this has been a great opportunity to work in partnership with the PAC Next team, and to take a deep dive into what needs to be true to make packaging more circular.
The key here is that the PAC Next team works for you, our members, and through this partnership, we aim to leverage and grow our expertise and ability to support you. Please know that the PAC Next team is always here and ready to support in any way we can on this journey to zero packaging waste, so give us a call or send an e-mail:
Alan Blake: alanblake7@gmail.com (513) 413-1438
Dan Lantz dlantz@crowsnestenvironmental.com (416) 986-7733
Andrew Macdonald awmacdonald55@gmail.com (416) 998-6435