Allison Lin, Global Director, Closures and Labels, Global Sustainable Procurement, The Coca-Cola Company
The Coca-Cola Company is the world’s largest total beverage company, offering over 500 brands to people in more than 200 countries. In addition to their namesake Coca-Cola drinks, some of their household names around the world include: Dasani waters, Fanta, Honest Tea, Minute Maid juices, Powerade sports drinks, smartwater, Sprite, vitaminwater, and Zico coconut water. With approximately 4,100 products worldwide, Coca-Cola is serious about making positive contributions to our world and is continuously working to reduce their environmental impact.
What do you actually do all day?
I work in the procurement and strategic sourcing function. I partner with our suppliers to source raw materials as well as identify what innovation they can bring to the company.
One of the first steps in sourcing is supplier selection, and it’s a great place to build sustainability into the process. You can ask suppliers what they are doing in terms of selecting more sustainable raw materials – can they use less material, are there renewable materials to explore, do they cost less, are they better quality? Some companies are even asking their suppliers if they are reusing or reducing internal waste, becoming more energy efficient, or otherwise managing their carbon footprint.
After supplier selection, then it’s about innovating together with your supplier. You can share what your sustainability goals are and then work together to find ways to get there. For example, when I worked at Starbucks, we wanted to improve the recyclability of our cups, lids, and sleeves. Our lids were polystyrene, #6 plastic, which wasn’t recyclable in most areas (California is starting to recycle #6 in some areas). We were able to collaborate with our suppliers and change the material we used to change the lids to #5 plastic, polypropylene, which is much more recyclable.
You can also work to connect your suppliers to other sustainability resources or see if you can use sustainable materials in more products. For example, when I was at Procter and Gamble (P&G), our recycled resin supplier was providing the raw materials for our Downy bottles and I worked on a project to get that material into our Pantene bottles as well.
A lot of my day to day work involves virtual and face to face meetings. I have a lot of interaction with our suppliers and our internal research and development teams, marketing teams, and manufacturing teams to ensure that what we’re bringing in meets our quality standards and our business needs. I also attend a lot of conferences too to ensure that I stay up to date on the latest technology trends and that we’re focusing on the right things as an industry. It really doesn’t make sense for any one company to pursue sustainability alone, it’s best to work together to improve sustainability practices for the whole system.
What are some of the key skills for success in this role?
Creative thinking is essential, you can’t let today’s constraints limit what’s possible for tomorrow. You need to be able to think about how you can get to where you want to go, and to make the connections and have the perseverance to see that through. A lot of projects seem as if they would be easy, but if that were true they would be done already. You need to connect the dots and the people who need to be collaborating to bring a solution to the market. Many people will say “that’s not how we do it” or “it can’t be done” and you just need to focus on removing obstacles, thinking creatively, and persevering.
I work with a lot of engineers, but I use a lot of business skills as well. A lot of what I do is collaboration – partnering with suppliers, joint research and development, and negotiations. In recycled materials, a lot of it is supply chain analysis and understanding how recycled materials make it from the blue bin at the curb into a bottle or cap. You need to be able to optimize the supply chain.
What is your favorite part of your job?
I love seeing something that I’ve been working on actually get into the hands of the consumer. I mentioned the project that changed the materials the Starbucks lid was made of – at the same time we also reduced the amount of materials required for the coffee sleeve. Those are sustainable innovations that are in the hands of millions of consumers every day, and I got to be a part of that and make that impact on the environment.
What is the hardest part of your job?
You hear “no” a lot because a lot of these materials are new. Some people think recycled materials are dirty, so you have to get the facts and data and push through those perceptions. You also have to be creative to turn a “no” now into a “yes” in two years. What’s made me successful is that a lot of people get frustrated and quit, which is common in big corporations where you have a lot of conflicting priorities. You’ve got to continue to try and look at a problem in different ways.
What is your proudest professional achievement?
Definitely the lid and sleeve project at Starbucks. It truly took a village and I got to work with a lot of people. I even got to work with marketing to draft the message that went on the sleeve itself (less material, same great sleeve) which was really fun because I don’t usually get to work with marketing much. Seeing it in stores is really awesome, the scale is just so huge.
What are the game changers in your world?
It would be a huge difference if we could get more people to recycle. In the United States we recycle less than 30% of recyclable materials, and the more that we can recycle the more efficient the process becomes and the more materials we can reuse. In general, we need more recycled materials in the system and the technology to make them reusable and the higher volume would help more areas make the investment in technology that can sort the materials more efficiently.
What was your path to this role?
I went to Carnegie Mellon and majored in Business Administration, so I thought I’d be an investment banker on Wall Street after graduation. I got a lot of offers to work for big banks, but I wanted to try something different, so when I got an offer from P&G I decided to take it. When I was at P&G, I was approached for a role sourcing bio-based and recycled materials, and that began my career in sustainability. It’s a bit non-traditional since so many sustainability roles are on the corporate social responsibility team or in research and development. I really loved working in sustainable packaging sourcing and decided to do that for Starbucks next. It was great to work for a smaller company since I got to influence sustainable packaging decisions in a broader way than I could at a larger company. I helped develop their goals and policies for sustainable packaging, things like increasing the amount of recycled materials in their products and making everything recyclable.
What’s your advice to someone interested in a role like this?
You can always build sustainability into your role even if it’s not in your title. You can build on your passion by working with your strengths and developing yourself into the role you want. It’s important to develop functional skill sets to add to your passion for sustainability so that you can better bring sustainability into your daily work.
What are your favorite resources?
There’s a fantastic conference called the National Plastics Exhibition (NPE) which I went to recently. I was really impressed by how many students were there talking to the manufacturers and learning about what they’re looking for from a skill set perspective.
The Society of Plastics Engineers has a sustainability packaging resources group as well as a lot of job postings. I’ve spoken at several events, so you don’t have to be an engineer to join.
Net Impact is a great organization to get involved with when you’re a student. Their conference is awesome.
The Sustainable Packaging Coalition is a great network that companies can join.
The Association of Plastic Recyclers is the trade association for plastic resellers.
The Recycling Partnership is a nonprofit dedicated to increase recycling in the US.
I also have a Google news alert for “sustainable packaging” and that catches a lot of the important news about the industry.
Who (or what) is your sustainability hero?
There was a gentleman at P&G who started a children’s drinking water nonprofit called Children’s Safe Drinking Water. He realized that if P&G partnered with NGOs to install P&G’s water purification technology in developing countries, they could provide clean drinking water a lot of people who really need it. It’s a great example of coming up with ideas for how large corporations can use their technology and scale to make a big social impact.
