How can Companies Work Together to Find a Solution to the Ongoing Plastic Waste Problem?

Benjamin brings over 13 years of experience in the packaging world, and 10 years creating and delivering packaging based market insight. During this time, Benjamin has worked with global clients big and small, and has been a regular speaker at international conferences. Benjamin has been with Mintel since 2012. In his current role as Global Packaging Insights Director, he is responsible for creating and delivering Mintel’s packaging content. Benjamin also leads the delivery of bespoke packaging insights, focusing on the specific packaging needs of Mintel’s clients. Prior to Mintel, he worked at Euromonitor International, initially as a researcher and client manager, which enabled him to forge strong links to the industry and grow his understanding of market research and insight needs. Subsequently, he was promoted to Head of Global Packaging Research, a role in which he led a significant revision in data collection, analysis and presentation that delivered a step change increase in data quality. Before joining the world of market research, Benjamin was Science Manager for Faraday Packaging Partnership. Working as a technology translator in this government funded initiative, he forged links between the packaging industry and academic excellence in fields as diverse as material science, decision making, engineering, psychology and design. Benjamin holds a Ph. D. in Polymer Physics from The University of Leeds where he investigated the pressure dependence of segmental polymer dynamics.

Chris has worked for PepsiCo for 27 years, predominantly in Supply Chain and Financial leadership roles. Having worked as a supply chain leader over the last decade, sustainability has been a critical part of Chris’ role and three years ago he formally took ownership of leading the sustainability agenda as part of his responsibilities to transform PepsiCo’s Europe’s supply chain. In this role, Chris leads PepsiCo’s work to embed sustainable thinking, practices and technology into the European supply chain. A key area he is driving is to establish end to end sustainability thinking into core decision making and processes across our business, alongside partnering with all stakeholders to make sustainable choices more accessible.

Dr Geoff Brighty is Technical Director at Plastic Oceans UK. His leads the sustainability, science and policy activities that are at the forefront of the Foundation’s legacy programmes, following the release of A Plastic Ocean in 2017. He develops plastic sustainability programmes with commercial companies to support their business response on both commercial and public reputation issues on plastics. He writes the policy positions for the Foundation, and is connected with other global policy thinkers that are shaping how we address this intractable global problem. He is a published research scientist and has a career spanning 30 years in the environmental protection and regulation sector.

Attila Turos is Vice President of Strategic Alliances, Loop and General Manager, Diagnostics at TerraCycle Inc. Previously, Attila was a senior international development professional specializing in developing and managing environmental sustainability and public health initiatives for Global Enterprises and International Organizations through public-private collaboration projects/programs. Notably, Attila led the World Economic Forum’s work on Sustainability and Circular Economy and lead public health programmes at the World Health Organization.