For the first time this year, in the afternoon prior to its gala awards dinner on 24 August, the Australian Packaging Covenant put into a play an exciting new initiative that was well received by the 50+ signatories in attendance.
Called Panel Conversations, three sessions were conducted to enable sustainability experts from high performing signatories to share thought provoking ideas and learnings.
“It was inspiring to see so many committed and engaged members at the sessions,” says APC CEO Trish Hyde. “There was a real buzz in the room as we shared industry insights, and discussed potential for collaboration and innovation.”
In the first session, entitled Driving and Embedding Change, the audience heard from Gavin Tait of Kathmandu, Tim Hackett of Henschke and Unilever's David Jones.
Demonstrating a clear passion for their respective sustainability commitments, each spoke about initiatives introduced to make change happen in their companies and all agreed that it wasn't a quick fix. In the final wrap, Tait stressed his Three E's approach: Everybody, Early on and Everyone around the table; Jones added another E for engagement, stressing the importance of employee buy-in and accountability; and Hackett said the key thing was being the driver for change yourself, or finding someone in the business who can be the driver and "put the miles in... so you will get eventually get somewhere".
Supply Chain Collaboration was the topic for the second session, where we heard from Russell Mullane of Sussan Group, Yoshie Obara of Jurlique, and Gary Combes of O-I. They described how they went about getting suppliers on board with their sustainability goals, which in the case of Jurlique and Sussan Group involved engaging with suppliers in China and overcoming language and culture barriers. For O-I, the challenge was getting supplier buy-in to make a change to their own packaging to support a necessary sustainable outcome for its glass recycling business.
A key takeout from this session was that when it comes to driving outcomes that will involve multiple stakeholders across a whole industry base, it's a good idea to engage the APC to assist in bringing those parties together to achieve the outcome more quickly.
It was also noted that keeping communication channels open and interactive with suppliers is important, not just auditing them and creating scorecards, but engaging them in the process of change and encouraging them to come up with innovation that could benefit both parties.
The final panel focused on Innovation Insights, and here we heard from Jackie Smiles of Blackmores, Susan Poh of Dell and Dai Forterre of Australia Post.
The discussion centred around the value of employees' ideas for innovation in the business, and in driving sustainable packaging changes. One message from was to value your employees, no matter where they work in the business, and that allows for ideas to come to the fore, and for you to see outside the square. All of us can make a difference.
Another message was within the framework of a holistic, big picture scope, start off taking small, incremental steps, gain momentum, identify ambassadors within the organisation that are of a similar mindset and utilise them to fertilise ideas across the business.
The APC says the Panel Conversations concept proved to be a good tool for promoting collaboration and that it would certainly be looking to running similar events in the future.
