Jeff Wooster is the global sustainability director for Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics. In this role, he collaborates with the entire value chain to promote and improve the sustainability value of plastic packaging. He is the past president of AMERIPEN, and is on the Board of Directors for GreenBlue. He serves on the steering team for the Ocean Conservancy’s Trash Free Seas Alliance signature initiative on marine debris and as Co-Chair of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Roadmap to Curb Ocean Waste (ROW) initiative. Additionally, Wooster serves as chair for American Chemistry Council’s Plastics Division Packaging Team and is a member of the Flexible Packaging Association’s Sustainability Task Force.

Jeff Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:

• Moving beyond the circular economy

• The future of plastics demanding radical collaboration

• The importance of  affordable solutions

• Dow's 2025 sustainability goals

• Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders

Jeff's Final Five Question Responses:

What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?

I would look at how sustainability interacts with business. If you work in a company and you want to work on sustainability, you don't have to work for the sustainability function to do that. You can work in R&D, you can work in Manufacturing, you can work in Supply Chain, you can work in Marketing and you can work in Accounts Payable. Any of those jobs have opportunities for people to apply sustainability principles to their work.

What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?

The thing I'm most excited about is that people are really committed to sustainability for the long term. It's not a fad. It's something that people are trying to think very holistically about and make sure that they do the right things for the best long-term benefit for people and the planet.

What is one book you'd recommend sustainability professionals read?

I'd love to recommend Patrick Moore's book, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout. Not just because he quit working for Greenpeace and started working on other things, but because he has lots of examples in that book of how sometimes things aren't as they seem. Sometimes we have to think in more detail and with a bit more complexity about the sustainability issues that we face. We can't just scratch the surface for five seconds and assume that we have the answer. We really need to dig into the details and make sure that we understand things on a deeper level.

What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?

I really like the websites of a number of our partners. So, The Sustainable Packaging Coalition has a website how2recycle.info, and it talks about various recycling programs and their label. ameripen.org has a number of useful publications on packaging. There's a great one on the value of packaging that we created early in the organization, but it's still applicable today. The Recycling Partnership has a great website. Keep America Beautiful. Ocean Conservancy. I could go on and on, but lots of great organizations have lots of good material available. People can also go to the Dowpackaging.com website and get some information on what Dow is doing.

Where can people go to learn more about you and the work that you're leading at Dow?

If you Google my name Jeff Wooster, you'll find some videos and things that I've made, but if you go to Dowpackaging.com, you'll be redirected to one of the pages that talks about some of the activities that we're doing around sustainability. And of course, you can go to the websites of those partners that I've mentioned and see the activities that we're supporting there as well.