Nic Hunt, Global Head of Sustainability, Nelipak
Hi, I’m Nick Hunt. I’m the Group Sustainability Director for Nelly Pack, a leader in the manufacturing of healthcare plastics.
What is your favorite thing about being a member of HPRC?
The HPRC is an action collaborative.
Its membership is widely drawn from across the industry, and it focuses on addressing the systemic problems around plastics recycling in healthcare. It does that by bringing together multiple stakeholders, all with the ability to influence the outcome, to work on very focused projects that deliver scalable and actionable results that healthcare can adopt universally.
What do you see as the biggest hurdle in healthcare plastics recycling?
One of the largest hurdles to healthcare plastics recycling is complexity.
We operate in large multi-stage value chains in a highly regulated environment. One example of this is Scope 3 emissions. It’s something that’s owned by every stage of the value chain. It’s complex to solve for, and only by collaborating and aligning together are we going to find a solution that we can pull from end to end and help deliver net-zero healthcare by 2050.
How do you see technology and innovation playing a role in the future of healthcare plastics recycling?
Healthcare needs to hit net-zero targets by 2050, and to do that from where we are today means we have to accelerate our pace. This means looking outside the way we’ve traditionally done things.
Technology and innovation are both excellent enablers.
They allow us to consider new processes and new ways of working that perhaps have not been available. And they also allow us to overcome the economic barriers that have prevented plastics recycling historically.