Erin Simon - Head of Plastic Waste and Business at World Wildlife Fund
Erin works to drive positive change across industries by leading WWF’s packaging and material science program.
Through her efforts, she works with business and industry to help them make informed, sustainable material choices for their products and packaging. Her work focuses on the major commodities that go into packaging, which come in many different forms and materials, and how to integrate sustainability into the decisions and trade-offs that must be evaluated across a product’s lifecycle.
Erin works with companies to strategically address their packaging work streams by focusing on developing transparency in the supply chain for the major packaging materials and pursuing strategies that reduce the environmental impact of these materials through responsible sourcing.
Prior to joining WWF, Erin worked at Hewlett Packard for 10 years as a packaging engineer responsible for the design and implementation of laser jet printer and media packaging.
Erin Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss:
The importance and urgency of eliminating plastic in our environment
WWF’s global No Plastic in Nature strategy
ReSource: Plastic – WWF’s activation hub to help companies turn plastic commitments into meaningful/measurable action
Fixing a broken waste management system: what can companies, governments and consumers do?
NextGenCup Challenge and other innovative ideas needed to solve for our plastic crisis
Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders
Erin's Final Questions Highlight:
What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers?
I would say that collaboration is going to be the key to us solving these big global complex issues. Often, in the sustainability space, we get really concerned about our piece of the work. My sandbox. This is mine. That's not productive and it's not going to help us get to where we want to go. I think that the most successful people I see today in this space are the ones who are building the bridges, not burning them.
What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability?
I'm excited that I feel like we have turned a page from where I had to spend time talking people into the value of sustainability for businesses into a desire to continue to raise the level of ambition. It's becoming the cost of doing business and now they are thinking about how to go behind that to do something to give back. That is exciting because the level of innovation and opportunity when the leadership in those organizations is at that point is really powerful.
What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work?
There are so many great organizations out there that teach me a lot of stuff. In the sustainability space you often have an area where you specialize and then you have to depend on all these other smart people to help you to learn about those things you don't know, enough so that you can valuable in that larger context. I spent a lot of time on websites of other organizations that I respect, learning about some of the programs that they're doing and how I could build a bridge between their work. I spent a lot of time on Ocean Conservancy and they have great resources. The Recycling Partnership is really specializing in increasing recycling in cities. They know a lot of data and wonky information about what people put in their bins and how to increase getting more bins and more collection in cities. I've been learning a lot about investment both in technologies and in different types of infrastructure from the Closed Loop Partners. On the global stage, I'm learning a lot more about how policy and legislation can drive some change that we need to see through other organizations who are doing great work like World Economic Forum and Ellen MacArthur Foundation. So, I spend a lot of time looking at what other powerful organizations are doing and try to build off of it.
Where can people go to learn more about you and the work that you're leading at WWF?
There is an experts page at the WWF website. There's also a lot going on at panda.org, which is our website. It talks about all the programmatic work that World Wildlife Fund US is doing, not just on plastic material science, but also on species preservation, ecosystem preservation, freshwater and oceans, the forest and of course the complex food and climate systems that interact with all of those things, including plastics.
Additional Sources:
ReSource: Plastic website: www.resource-plastic.com
WWF-US website: www.worldwildlife.org
WWF global website: www.panda.org
Erin’s expert page: https://www.worldwildlife.org/experts/erin-simon
WWF-US plastic page: https://www.worldwildlife.org/initiatives/plastics
No Plastic in Nature – practical guide for business engagement: https://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/no-plastic-in-nature-a-practical-guide-for-business-engagement
WWF Better Biz – sustainability twitter handle: https://twitter.com/WWFBetterBiz
Recent blog about the ReSource: Plastic program: https://www.worldwildlife.org/blogs/sustainability-works/posts/a-roadmap-for-the-plastic-revolution