The urgency of global environmental challenges demands more than individual company efforts. It requires systemic change, and as a recent panel discussion at Reuters Responsible Business 2025 highlighted, multi-stakeholder partnerships aren’t just beneficial, they’re crucial for accelerating sustainability goals.
Hosted by Antea Group USA and expertly moderated by Angie Dickson, Senior Vice President, the panel “Beyond Silos: Driving Systemic Change Through Collective Action” brought together leading voices from the Beverage Industry Environmental Roundtable (BIER) and the Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council (HPRC). Panelists included Matthew Blandford (Senior Manager Climate and Water, Suntory Global Spirits), Erica Pann (Executive Director, BIER), Milagro Lopez (Americas Marketing Lead, DuPont), and Adam Wozniak (Senior Manager of Sustainability, Ravago). Their insights offered a powerful look into how industry-driven forums are achieving impactful environmental progress.
Why Collective Action? It’s About Shared Challenges and Scaled Solutions
The conversation kicked off by addressing the fundamental question: Why join a consortium? Matthew Blandford of Suntory Global Spirits shared that BIER, established in 2006, provided crucial alignment on sustainability metric measurement and reporting. Simple yet vital things like defining “water use vs. consumption” helped eliminate inconsistencies across their peer group, accelerating internal discussions and real progress. He emphasized that many challenges, from increasing recycling rates and securing recycled material availability to defining demand for low-energy coolers or scaling improvements in regenerative agriculture, simply “cannot be solved by going it alone.”
Erica Pann underscored that BIER formed because environmental challenges are “too complex, too interconnected, and too urgent for any one company to tackle alone.” Water, for instance, a core ingredient for the beverage industry, “doesn’t follow corporate boundaries,” necessitating collective action, local alignment and long-term partnership for large-scale water stewardship projects and tackling climate resilience across the value chain.
Similarly, Milagro Lopez explained that DuPont, a founding member of HPRC in 2010, saw the value in understanding the broader value chain challenges in healthcare plastics. The coalition aims to enable safe, viable, and cost-effective recycling solutions for plastic products and packaging in healthcare, advocating for sustainability and a circular economy.
Adam Wozniak passionately articulated that HPRC embodies “collaborative partnerships” and “flattens silos.” This allows diverse companies, including competitors, to share questions and learn from each other in a highly regulated, complex industry. He highlighted that “plastics unto itself is a challenging thing because of the different classifications and different types,” and addressing these complexities demands a united front to deliver complementary technologies that offer carbon reduction solutions.
Tangible Progress Through Pre-Competitive Collaboration
The panel moved beyond theory, offering concrete examples of how collective action translates into real-world impact and amplifies efforts:
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- Glass Recycling in Kentucky (BIER): Matthew Blandford shared a groundbreaking initiative where three BIER member companies with a strong footprint in Kentucky (a state with low recycling rates) partnered with a glass supplier and a third party. They collaboratively funded and created a new recycling entity focused on processing glass in the greater Louisville area. This effort directly provides recycled cullet back into the regional glass market, collectively driving up recycled content for the industry as a whole—a powerful example of pre-competitive collaboration for broader benefit.
- Healthcare Plastic Circularity & Advanced Recycling (HPRC): Adam Wozniak underscored that “collaborative partnerships are critical to driving circularity in healthcare.” HPRC unites hospitals, medical device manufacturers (MDMs), recyclers, resin producers, and policymakers to design smarter products and enable advanced recycling. He cited HPRC’s work in conducting sortation studies and demonstrating that hospital plastics are “very clean feedstocks,” suitable for advanced recycling technologies. He emphasized HPRC’s role in establishing crucial end markets and helping to create infrastructure, even advocating for the inclusion of advanced recycling in Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) frameworks.
- Accelerating Individual Company Goals: Milagro Lopez illustrated how HPRC participation accelerates DuPont’s own sustainability journey. He shared an example of a new DuPont product, “Tyvek® with Renewable Attribution (RA),” which shifted from 100% fossil-based feedstock to incorporating 30% bio-circular feedstock. This innovation, informed by collaborative insights, directly contributes to a one-third reduction in CO2 emissions, addressing crucial Scope 3 emissions.
Navigating the Complexities: Building Trust and Sharpening Focus
Driving change collectively isn’t without its hurdles. Erica Pann candidly admitted the work is “super challenging,” as member companies have unique realities including different business models, regulatory requirements, sustainability maturity. The key, she noted, is to aim for “strategic coherence”—finding “just enough common ground to come together”—rather than forcing full alignment.
Matthew Blandford powerfully added that in-person meetings twice a year are invaluable. These face-to-face interactions build relationships, and the trust needed to navigate difficult conversations. When discussions become too broad, BIER leadership will step back to “narrow the scope” and agree on what the consortium can and should address, ensuring actionable objectives.
Adam Wozniak discussed challenges like antitrust concerns with competitors at the table, emphasizing strict “Chatham House Rules” for discussions to maintain focus on shared sustainability goals. He stressed the importance of collaborating to understand “design for recyclability,” noting that 80% of a product’s environmental impact is determined during the design phase.
The panel also addressed the challenge of supplier disclosure requests, acknowledging the “20 questionnaires asking the same thing” burden. While full alignment isn’t yet achieved, BIER and HPRC are actively working with other consortia to standardize approaches, understanding that “inaction is cost.”
The Future is Action: Less Talk, More Impact
The conversation converged on a powerful, shared vision: action over talk.
Erica Pann underscored, “If you’re waiting for the perfect set of circumstances to arise, you might be waiting for a long time.” She urged, “Let’s do it together.” Matthew Blandford passionately concluded, “Collective action is all about action, getting things done. The big issues of the day need big action and big solutions, not big talk.” He emphasized that alignment and driving forward, even if not perfect initially, lead to “larger, faster, and more repeatable impact.”
Adam Wozniak echoed this sentiment, stating that “collective action and collaborative partnerships are essential to solving some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time.” He framed advancing circularity as “our generation’s ‘Race to Space’,” empowering true transformation and building new pathways to sustainability that deliver lasting social, economic, and environmental impact.
The panel left no doubt: while challenges exist, the benefits of shared vision, trust, and concerted effort through forums like BIER and HPRC far outweigh them. It’s through this collaborative spirit that systemic change is unlocked, and progress toward a more sustainable future is truly accelerated.
About HPRC
HPRC is a private technical coalition of industry peers across healthcare, recycling, and waste management industries seeking to improve the recyclability of plastic products within healthcare. Made up of more than 30 brand-leading and globally recognized members collectively representing greater than $1.3 trillion in market value, HPRC explores ways to enhance the economics, efficiency, and ultimately the quality and quantity of healthcare plastics collected for recycling in support of a circular plastics economy. HPRC is active across the United States and Europe working with key stakeholders, identifying opportunities for collaboration, and participating in industry events and forums. For more information, visit www.hprc.org and follow HPRC on LinkedIn.