Brian Lodge: Director of Plastics and Flexible Packaging at the British Plastics Federation (BPF)

Seeing Strategy Through a New Lens

In our interview, we spoke of founding organisational strategies, where Brian emphasised the importance of creating a plan for the long-term future to be able to lead your institution to its best possible position. He stressed that accurately predicting future scenarios can be complicated and that one cannot solely rely on their own knowledge and experience. “You need a group of people to make a substantial plan for the future” he stated, highlighting the critical role of collaboration in strategic thinking processes.

BPF is a trade association representing a large number of companies, from multinational corporations to small family-run businesses in the UK. This heterogeneity makes it difficult to cater to the needs of different members in the association. Brian explains that whilst the larger corporations have the resources and people that can represent their interests in the government, smaller companies don’t have the same capabilities. Therefore, the role of a trade body is an important one, in helping all stakeholders in the sector to be heard by legislators. This can happen through letters to Parliament, select committees or publishing an article.

In addition to new strategic planning approaches, Brian reflects on how the Collaborative Group enhanced his teaching skills. He recently gave a seminar on incorporating recycled content in plastic packaging, and afterwards, he received positive feedback about the high-quality content and professional delivery, demonstrating Brian’s developed leadership and teaching, an important competence for someone with such a wealth of knowledge and ability to reach broad audiences in the sector.

Embedding Futures Thinking into Policy and Practice

The Futures & Foresight tools introduced by the Collaborative Group revealed the importance of flexibility when developing new initiatives. Brian described that there’s “not a one-size-fits-all approach” when it comes to sustainability or packaging innovation, and he credited Professor Jeff Gold’s teaching of multiple techniques of analysing data in creating variants of future scenarios. Indeed, unpicking the “possible and probable” futures relies both on data, experience and creative abilities.

A large focus of the BPF is to provide education and training for members, which includes online training courses on design for recyclability. Brian highlighted the widely used tool PackScore for assessing packaging sustainability, which can be used to develop new products. He noted how it has a thousand regular users, which gets the information out to lots of people.

Plastic vs Practicality

The Collaborative initiative also reinforced the need for industry-wide collaboration, a principle deeply embedded in BPF’s strategy. Stronger connections between value and supply chains allow the organisations to create a suitable plan for the future to maintain its effectiveness at representing companies in the packaging industry. Brian said: “Packaging isn’t just about the material, it’s about the entire system, from farm to fork.”

As the Director of Packaging at the BPF, Brian was very clear about the need to focus on the real problems within the industry so that efforts can be focused together to be as effective as possible. In the UK, around 10.7 million tonnes of food is wasted each year, which Brian argued from a sustainability viewpoint is a much bigger problem than using plastic in packaging. While it is important to try and use sustainable materials wherever possible, some food products simply require plastic packaging to keep the food fresher for longer. This arguably is better for the environment as it results in lower carbon emissions through logistics and limiting spoilage. An example of a fresh cucumber was used, which will last only three days on a shelf, but with a film wrapper, its shelf life is increased to about two weeks. Brian notes, however, that each product requires a different pack for optimal sustainability, and in some categories, canned food will be the most environmentally friendly choice due to the extended shelf life such packaging provides.

Overall, Brian found the Collaborative Group really useful for developing foresight-driven strategies. By embedding the principles of industry-wide collaboration and flexibility into its operations, the BPF is now better equipped to navigate the complexities of sustainable packaging and to educate and represent its members.