Nestle' (Jodie Roussell) Global Public Affairs Lead Packaging and Sustainability

https://www.nestle.com/

It was an honor to interview Jodie Roussell from Nestle' and to be honest it was one of the best episodes I've done so far. Be sure to check this one out. 

What are the 5 R's that Nestle' focuses on? 
How did they replace 4.5 Billion plastic straws with recyclable paper straws? 
Did you know they implemented reusable packaging for one of their products in Germany that get's up to 100 uses? 

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Transcript

Cory Connors: 0:31

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guest is Jody Roussel, the Global Public Affairs Lead for Packaging and Sustainability at Nestle. Wow, Jody, I'm honored to have you on. Thank you.

Jodie Roussell: 0:44

Oh, thank you, Corey. It's a pleasure to join you.

Cory Connors: 0:46

what you're doing in the packaging industry at Nestle is in my opinion, setting the bar for a lot of things and taking risks and reinventing things. but before we get into that, let's talk a little bit about how your journey got you to where you are today.

Jodie Roussell: 1:01

about my background. So I worked in renewable energy for about 20 years working with the solar industry, mixed renewable technologies. I was involved In solar panel, recycling early in my career, designing systems for take back and then had done some work on mixed paper and plastic waste for the paper industry. And then, in 1 of my latter roles, when I was working in the solar industry in Europe, leading up to the, the WE directive on electronic waste. I got involved with the team that was building the e waste take back system for the solar industry. And we went through voluntary EPR to mandatory EPR. And while I was there, we scaled up to compliance building producer responsibility organizations in 18 countries. And so I spent about seven years before joining Nestle, living the journey of EPR evolution under an EU directive. And so working on the policy solutions to Build and manage the future system of packaging waste. I saw it as a key challenge moving ahead, and it was very similar to the challenge of managing electronic waste. So for me, it was a natural progression to join Nestle working on this big systems challenge.

Cory Connors: 2:11

I agree. What an impressive background and you're exactly right. We need to strive for a circular economy, a circular packaging system. And I think we're getting closer every day, but I think we have a long ways to go, like we talked about before the podcast. but that's okay. it's an adventure we're on together, a lot of work to be done, but let's talk about Nestle. You've been doing some incredible things to improve the sustainability, oftentimes groundbreaking things, unique, brand new, never been done before. can you tell us about what's your focus? How do you focus this huge brands and company and onto one goal?

Jodie Roussell: 2:51

I'll frame it in terms of the big picture. And then I think we can delve into some of the specific examples. And when we look at how Nestle frames. The challenge of packaging sustainability. We look at less packaging, better packaging, and a better system. All of those are necessary for us to move forward. We also, from an R& D perspective, have a material development function, the Nestle Institute of Packaging Sciences, with roughly 50 researchers, as well as our product technology centers that are taking research and applying it to commercial products. there's I have the honor of being the representative of the packaging function in many instances to the outside world, explaining the work we do, and bringing the outside in, bringing the views of external stakeholders, external opportunities to the company, and then sharing what's happening inside Nestle with the rest of the world.

Cory Connors: 3:42

it seems to be a two function job, absorbing information, bringing in experts, and then how do you, modify that information in house, and then how do you put it, push it back to the world and try new things and package it.

Jodie Roussell: 3:56

Yeah, it's this combination of internal collaboration and external exchanges, whether it's working internally with colleagues from R& D and operations to our wonderful colleagues in 188 countries where we operate, the expertise, the commitment to new solutions they bring, and the collaborative spirit inside the company. working with stakeholders outside can be. Equally invigorating and fascinating because they often enable us to understand through new perspectives and through new eyes, if we understand how they view the world, and that helps us to build better solutions.

Cory Connors: 4:33

very true. And it's like we said before, it's a journey. And, there isn't any sustainable packaging yet, in our opinion, we have a long ways to go. we're just progressing slowly towards more sustainable packaging and maybe I should change the name to more sustainable or even better. there's a lot of iterations we could go through, but I always ask anybody that, that works for a large food company, what's your favorite food or what's your favorite Nestle product that you like to enjoy?

Jodie Roussell: 5:04

I really love Nespresso's Reviving Origins line of Espresso. and Reviving Origins is amazing because the teams behind these brands They go into communities, often communities, where there's been war and conflict over many years and they bring the coffee plants and they support farmers capacity building and they also commit to buy a certain portion of the harvest and they work with the farmers to create world class coffee. Some of the best coffee out there with really unique flavors. When we talk about wine, we talk about the terroir, and that's what Nespresso Reviving Origins brings out. And it may be that they only make a couple thousand boxes or a couple of tens of thousand boxes from 500 or 700 farmers in a particular location with this program. But for the community, it means a total transformation of their economic opportunities through farming. And so that's my favorite brand. With no bias against the other brands, but I really love what Reviving Origins is doing as a consumer.

Cory Connors: 6:08

I think you're allowed to have a favorite. Yeah, absolutely. I can't wait to try those. That sounds delicious. Now I want to, it's

Jodie Roussell: 6:14

worth looking for them.

Cory Connors: 6:16

And I understand that about the earth and the different soils. It's very important. I live in Portland, Oregon, and we have 1400 vineyards here and they all talk about, well, we have this kind of soil and we have that kind of earth and this is our acidity level and it's, this is why our Pinot Noir is the best. So I totally understand that concept and never thought about it for coffee, but that makes perfect sense.

Jodie Roussell: 6:39

and that's what they're really bringing out with these coffees.

Cory Connors: 6:42

So let's talk a little bit about packaging. your company has many brands. Do you have a favorite project or something that was like, this is really an insightful change in packaging for more sustainable packaging?

Jodie Roussell: 6:56

we have lots of products in the innovation space. This is a really rich area inside the company. and when I think about packaging, sustainability, and what's had the biggest impact so far, there are a mix of different measures in play. first of all, the purpose of packaging, it's about protecting the product. It's about ensuring food safety, it's, and also preservation, sometimes through longer delivery supply lines across geographies, maybe to islands, in hot and humid climates, and also to fit consumer preferences in terms of how people like to consume a particular food product. So we look at this through five pillars. We look at reduction, we look at reuse and refill, redesign. Infrastructure projects and also rethinking mindsets. And so those are the five major areas we innovate in. So. I do have favorites in a couple areas, but it, it's hard to say which ones had the biggest impact. I'll give you a couple examples in terms of less packaging. This is about building fit for purpose packaging for a particular food and for a particular supply chain. So that might be lightweighting a package. But it might be an entire redesign. one example, Gerber Baby Food redesigned their, baby food pots. It had a paper overwrap, but inside there was a thick plastic cap. We removed that plastic cap in a redesign process. That allowed us to eliminate several thousand tons of plastic a year and further light weighted the package for shipping, but it didn't change the consumer experience. So this was really well received. our R& D colleagues have a critical role to play in innovation, and when I think about better packaging that we've designed, we'd spend a lot of time working on design for recycling so that our packaging actually fits the collection and recycling system that exists in a market. We've spent, a lot of time and energy on paperization. One of the more notable examples is the paperization of straws. So if you drink a beverage in a small beverage carton, as are beloved by many children, it used to have a plastic straw on it. And several years ago, Nestle started the process of creating new technology for a paper straw that could actually not only bend, because there are many straight paper straws, but few that bend and can survive a child chewing it. for a significant amount of time, but also break down in a paper pulping process for recycling. And so we succeeded in that innovation challenge. And then over two and a half years from innovation to rollout, we replaced 4. 5 billion straws a year from plastic to paper. And now those paper straws get popped into the beverage carton after they're used and they get recycled along with the beverage carton.

Cory Connors: 9:41

Amazing.

Jodie Roussell: 9:42

so that's an example of how we rethought, an entire accessory And we're able to redesign it and build a supply chain along the way. So powerful.

Cory Connors: 9:54

Yeah, incredible.

Jodie Roussell: 9:56

And we've also done things that are quite radical in terms of alternative systems for delivery, like reuse. There's one example now, if I, you mentioned you're in Oregon, but if you end up going to Germany, when you're over for the conference. I'd love to. You could see one of our products that's, that's right now in the Rewe grocery stores in Germany called Circulution. It's a stainless steel cup that's designed for 75 to 100 use cycles. And we launched this with a partner, Circulution, as well as a local coffee startup. So we're using it for Nesquik. They're using it for coffee. The cup stacks into itself when it's empty, so you use less space for the reverse logistics. And Circulution provides a packaging as a service model, where they're collecting and washing and then delivering packaging clean back to our facilities, just like a single use package, so that we can bring this reusable concept to grocery stores. Germany already has a really strong culture of consumer reuse and consumers, they're used to bringing back their packaging for a deposit return, for example, on the weekends when they do their grocery shopping. And so this has taken off quite quickly in Germany.

Cory Connors: 11:34

That's a, that's an incredible point. And I think, you're exactly right. German people and the country of Germany has been a leader for many years in reusable packaging with their beverage or mostly beer, I'm sure bottles. And, I've heard nothing but positive things from people that live there about the system. It's ingrained in their culture. And what a smart idea to start a reusable packaging system for Nestle Quick. By the way, I grew up on that stuff. I love it still, but it's a, it was a favorite as we were kids in Oregon. So thank you for making that, great product, but that sounds like a perfect example of, utilizing the culture. To make a more sustainable system. Do you have plans to, make that other places?

Jodie Roussell: 12:26

So, with reuse, it's all about enabling conditions.

Cory Connors: 12:29

Right.

Jodie Roussell: 12:30

In some countries where we operate new enabling conditions, such as policies, for example, France, policies are being put in place that specify reuse or require reuse. In other cases, we see policies that feature a category by category approach so that Okay. You're not asking various industries to decide themselves who goes first, but this is actually being structured by the government. So an entire supply chain that supports a category type can move. There are also important questions that need to be looked at in terms of decarbonization of logistics, in terms of optimization of washing hubs and collection points. many countries, for example, have collection with deposit return, but if a country doesn't have a culture of returning a package for a deposit, that's one of the first elements that actually needs to be built, because from that culture for returning, whether it's a takeaway container or if it's a beverage container that you're used to returning it, such as the bottle bill states that exist in the U. S., there's that culture of return and that's something you can build on. But many countries have their own example. China has reusable chopsticks, which have become a standard. India has wonderful stainless steel, lunch takeaway containers that are really elegant and stackable. Those are beautiful. They're really beautiful. Many countries have their own model of traditional reuse and it's about leveraging that consumer habit, so that it's built in and has a certain level of convenience and acceptance. But this isn't something that companies can do on their own. This is a complete systems shift. And it can be enabled by policy. And that's why when we talk about reuse, we talk about enabling conditions.

Cory Connors: 14:07

Yes, very well said. And I think oftentimes the pressure is put on companies like yours, to act and make change, but we can't expect you to do this on your own. And, it has to be a group effort through policy change, extended producer responsibility laws, consumers saying, okay, I'm on board.

Jodie Roussell: 14:28

It's a big cultural shift.

Cory Connors: 14:30

Right? It is. And it seems Oftentimes, people will be on the show and they're frustrated. Why isn't it moving faster? And I said, well, we've been doing this way for 100 years or 50 years. look at the history of packaging. it's going to take a few generations to, make some serious changes. And I think, do you feel like that starts with, extended producer responsibility and, And things even higher than that, it may be the U. N.

Jodie Roussell: 14:58

extended producer responsibility is a key policy, and it's really important as well to get the design right. the U. N. treaty has really a key role to play moving forward in harmonization of some key elements of the plastics lifecycle. The U. N. treaty is not looking at packaging, but it's actually looking at all plastics. In the full life cycle, and that could be everything from plastic food packaging to consumer goods to fishing nets or construction components. And so the scope is actually quite wide in what we anticipate will end up in the treaty will actually be fairly high level language aligning around a couple major areas that have already been put in the zero draft and the revised zero draft. And if I list just a few, they're looking at chemicals and polymers of concern or problematic plastic products, looking at product design standards, composition and performance, extended producer responsibility, of course. and waste management and how it's possible to actually address existing plastic pollution. So we at Nestle, we work with the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty, which is a collective today of over 200 businesses and financial institutions who support a legally binding treaty. And we talk about Three areas. Basically, we're looking at collection and keeping plastic in the cycle and in the economy reduction of plastic production that aligns with our climate objectives as well as recycling targets and lastly, cleanup of legacy plastic microplastics in the environment. So it's addressing really all three levels of the plastic system in a responsible way.

Cory Connors: 16:37

Yeah, very well said. And you're involved with that group at the UN. So thank you for the work that you're doing. We, appreciate it. And we're, we're here to help, when the decisions are made. And, if we can provide any insights, we'd be happy to. I had, somebody. Wonderful. Thank

Jodie Roussell: 16:53

you.

Cory Connors: 16:54

Yeah, thank you. I had somebody on the podcast yesterday, and she was saying, we need to stop looking at. Looking at it as waste and looking at it as a resource recovery system. Absolutely. And I, it was, I think it's just different verbiage, but it's different. It's a different mindset too that I think you, you share.

Jodie Roussell: 17:13

Yeah. for us, it's also a question of, what's at stake if we get no treaty or a weak treaty? Yeah. if we look at what the United Nations Environment Program is telling us today about risks, right now the projections are pretty grim about, New plastic production growing unabated that likely were to exceed greenhouse gas emissions, which will risk the 1. 5 degree target chemical planetary boundaries. In some cases have been exceeded for the planet. there can be risks around health around biodiversity and ecosystems. and there's work that's being done today to assess no. What are the issues around microplastics? So all of this is being discussed in the scope of the treaty and brought up very articulately by scientists, companies are really concerned that if we don't get a treaty or we get a weak one, we won't get harmonized regulation, and we certainly won't get a level playing field for the companies that are already investing significantly. in evolving their system of how they're using these materials and packaging. the environment we have today is characterized by limbo. There are voluntary commitments in play, but we have slow and fragmented policy development, relatively high compliance costs, and limited economies of scale. And if we're going to shift that to a better system, we need regulation giving everyone clear directions about how we're all going to move forward together instead of the current. mismatch of different policies that are particularly challenging from a trade perspective.

Cory Connors: 18:41

that's exactly right. That should be the intro to my show. I think that it's exactly the issue. we're all, working. Well, most people and most companies are working towards more sustainable future. There are some holdouts that, don't seem to care, but, I haven't ran into very many of those, but I think those people will be, dragged along and maybe that's okay. But then there's people like you that are leading the charge. So we appreciate what you're doing. I do want to talk about the Sustainable Packaging Summit, that Packaging Europe puts on every year. You're going to be heavily involved with that again this year. tell us about that. What are you excited about for that show in Amsterdam in November?

Jodie Roussell: 19:21

in terms of the event, I'm very much looking forward to going, in terms of the conversation, I think I'm looking forward to the conversation with the packaging community talking about how do we put packaging in the context of its purpose, for us in food and beverage. This is about protecting the food and keeping product preservation very centric to our approach. thank you. I'd also love to get into new views on value chain collaboration that could enable new forms of packaging that might have better environmental outcomes and perhaps better cost outcomes. let's think about things like shorter shelf lives that can drive shorter industry value chains and the cost savings that can come with them, and also open up additional packaging materials. So we're looking forward to a strong debate on these items with other members of the industry. And it's always a great group of attendees.

Cory Connors: 20:12

I love that. and possible that you'll be speaking there. I know we can't confirm, but, I know Mr. Tim Sykes has suggested that,

Jodie Roussell: 20:21

he was very kind and had invited us to, to probably come and discuss what's going on with the treaty because, we also want to talk about the positives. how does business benefit from such a piece of multilateral bilateral. legislation. And this is really about driving harmonization with laws and standards across countries that can be more and more similar. It could lower our compliance costs. It could drive new economies of scale. It could level the playing field both for multinationals and for local companies that are seeking to develop more sustainable packaging options. And it could also mandate some fair share of financing. Of waste management across the value chain. So we're looking forward to also talking about the positive elements about how can new legislation actually enable new business models, enable innovation and achieve better societal outcomes, both in terms of protecting the product, but also how we deliver it and how, as your other guest had said, how it becomes a resource with recovered materials that have value in a secondary market.

Cory Connors: 21:24

I, I'm excited about it. listening to people like you that are leading the charge and making an actual positive impact is, it's exciting. It's, invigorating. Oftentimes people get, get depressed about these things because, oh, well, we have a long ways to go. But, I wanted to thank you for being on the show and to, for providing a positive light to this, future, I think with, Things like you mentioned pre competition cooperation between brands and, looking at shelf lives and things. some of these things don't need two year shelf lives. They need two, two weeks. so we can absolutely modify packaging to, for the supply chain where it's going. Makes sense.

Jodie Roussell: 22:06

I think we have to stay focused on where innovation, whether it's in terms of business models, supply chain, collaboration, or technology can create new opportunities for us.

Cory Connors: 22:17

Yeah, well said. Oftentimes people ask me, how can I help? So I'd love your opinion on how can people like me and the packaging industry, or maybe, somebody that works at a large company or even a small company, how can they help the process?

Jodie Roussell: 22:34

I think there are two levels. there's the level for all of us as individual consumers in terms of being aware of the choices that we're making and also reaching out whether it's joining at your national level or the international level, a collaborative like the Business Coalition for the Global Plastics Treaty. that's bringing like minded businesses together to advocate for positive change, or whether it's calling your local politicians and asking for a better system if you're unsatisfied with the collection and sorting system in your country. I think that when we look as an industry toward the future, there are a lot of really exciting innovations and opportunities coming out. one of them, I'll say this as we're a consumer goods company, is about consumer preferences. We need to embed consumer centricity and design, whether it's for left handed and right handed people, easy to open packaging for older individuals, and also packaging innovation that fits with how we live today. We have this diversification of household compositions that hasn't necessarily existed in the past, where The nuclear family has now diversified into many single households, many three generational households, many collective households of young adults, and their consumer needs are different than the nuclear families needs. I think it's also about Those of us in the industry looking about aligning around. How do we create opportunities for green jobs with the systems? Rethink jobs in collection jobs and sorting jobs, building out reuse systems, recycling systems, trading jobs in recovered materials and creating value and identifying new customers for those materials as we get to better and better quality grades. I think also there's a role in standards. The treaty certainly could play a role here, but this is very practical work. Are the standards for recycling in country A and its neighbor, country B going to be the same or different? And how will that infect the value of the materials? Um, the future has a lot of different options and I think that when we look at what material science may deliver. That's one area, but we can also look at the reinvention of traditional materials. How can glass, how can aluminum, how can tin play a role in packaging of the future, given the challenges and the imperative of net zero emissions in the future of the economy? And how can these materials that are in circulation and have, in many countries, well established recycling systems become lighter weight, transported without emissions, and more competitive? So I think we have a lot of really interesting developments to explore. And for professionals in the industry, it's about challenging ourselves. How do we rethink what the future might look like?

Cory Connors: 25:22

Absolutely. Excellent. Thank you, man. That's perfect. I couldn't have said it better. Absolutely. I'm excited. I'm looking forward to meeting you at, the sustainable packaging summit in Amsterdam and, getting to hear you and the other speak about the treaty. I think this is a very valuable aspect of that event. so, how do people get in touch with you? how do they reach out to Nestle maybe to, to be a part of the team to help this journey?

Jodie Roussell: 25:49

Yeah, if they're interested in joining the work we're doing with the Business Coalition, we have a website, the Business Coalition for the Global Plastics Treaty, and if it's about collaborations with Nestle, they can always reach out through LinkedIn and we can match them up with the right collaboration contact point in the company.

Cory Connors: 26:05

Well, thanks again, Jody. I really appreciate your wisdom and all the work you're doing. Thank you.

Jodie Roussell: 26:10

It was a pleasure speaking with you, Corey. Thanks very much and looking forward to this fall.

Cory Connors: 26:14

Appreciate having you on.

Jodie Roussell: 26:15

Thanks. Bye bye.