Executive Committee


 

SPC Executive Committee

The SPC Executive Committee is an advisory committee to GreenBlue that consists of nine elected members and one GreenBlue representative, all of whom are dedicated to the SPC and our mission. In their advisory capacity, they provide strategic and fiscal guidance on meetings, events, projects, and all other aspects of the Coalition. The Executive Committee is required to have a minimum representation from across the supply chain and elections are held once a year in the fall. Members serve three-year terms.


 

Koen Bastiaens, Commercial Director, Ingeo Films and Cards, NatureWorks LLC


Koen Bastiaens leads the Films and Cards business for NatureWorks LLC, a company formed with the unique mission of bringing to market a broad family of performance plastics and fibers created from plants, not oil. In this position, Koen works with leading sheet and film converters and aligns them with brandowners and retailers. Koen joined NatureWorks in 1997 in a production management role. He has since held roles as market and business development leader for new business platforms including for fibers and carpeting, paper extrusion coatings, and food packaging foams. Previous to this role, he held engineering and management positions within Cargill’s biorefinery division. Koen received a Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota and is located at NatureWorks headquarters in Minnetonka, Minnesota, USA.


 

Victor Bell, President, Environmental Packaging International

Victor Bell is a Certified Packaging Professional with more than 20 years of experience with environmental issues associated with packaging and products. In 1998, Mr. Bell founded Environmental Packaging International (EPI), a consultancy that advises global brandowners and retailers on a wide range of environmental packaging and product stewardship issues. He served on the Sustainable Packaging Coalition Executive Committee in the past and participated in the ISO Packaging Standard Committee and Global Protocol on Packaging Sustainability. Mr. Bell received his MMA (Marine Affairs) and BS (Natural Resource) degrees from the University of Rhode Island and an MS (Urban and Environmental Studies) from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.



 

Kim Carswell, Senior Manager of Packaging, Target


Kim Carswell is Senior Manager of Packaging at Target where she is working to create a best in class retailer packaging development team. Kim has been at Target for five years and has over 25 years of packaging development experience. Prior to Target, Kim was the Director of Packaging Development at General Mills and the Associate Director of Packaging at Kraft. She has focused on guest centric packaging development and building strong partnerships with packaging suppliers throughout her career. Kim and her teams have delivered key packaging innovations to the market including the first Parmesan cheese package in PET, reclosable shredded cheese packaging, Gogurt yogurt in a tube, and an innovative package for Archer Farms cereal at Target. Kim has a Bachelor of Science degree in Dairy Science and a Master of Science in Packaging Engineering from Michigan State University.


 

April Crow, Global Sustainable Packaging Manager, The Coca-Cola Company


As Global Sustainable Packaging Manager for The Coca-Cola Company, April Crow is responsible for launching global initiatives related to sustainable packaging. In her current role she is working to help the company reach its vision of a world in which packaging is no longer seen as waste but as a valuable resource for future use. During her fifteen years at Coca-Cola she has held a variety of roles in Environment and Water Resources, Scientific & Regulatory Affairs, and Quality. Her educational background includes a Bachelor of Science Degree in Environmental Health from the University of Georgia and a Master of Science Degree in Instructional Technology. She maintains an active role with several environmental organizations serving on the board member for Rivers Alive and the Georgia Recycling Coalition. April has been an active member of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition since 2005 and is a participant of the Global CEO Forum Global Packaging Project.


 

Paul Earl-Torniainen, Senior Packaging Engineer, General Mills

Paul Earl-Torniainen is a Sustainability Manager at General Mills in Minneapolis. Paul’s focus is to “operationalize” sustainability, which includes developing tools that simplify sustainability so that it can be used regularly in business decision making, creating business processes to identify and implement projects that reduce both environmental impact and cost, and educating employees and consumers. Paul has been at General Mills for 18 years, working for most of that time in Packaging R&D prior to joining the Sustainability team. He leverages his experience to drive progress in organizations such as the Sustainability Consortium, Wal-Mart’s Sustainable Value Network, and the Consumer Goods Forum. Paul holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Clarkson University and an MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, and he has earned six patents.



 

Kim Frankovich, VP Sustainability, Solo Cup Company (Now Part of Dart Container Corp.)

Kim Frankovich has spent six years at Solo and in her current role as VP Sustainability, she is responsible for setting sustainability goals and strategies to lower Solo’s environmental impact, researching and advising on sustainable raw materials, and managing strategic sustainability partnerships focused on increasing the recycling and composting of its products. Kim’s active participation in associations as a committee or board member include the Association of Post Consumer Plastic Recyclers (APR), the National Association of PET Container Resources (NAPCOR), the Biodegradable Product Institute (BPI) and affiliates of Keep America Beautiful. She also chairs Solo’s Sustainability Action Network, a network of over 300 volunteer employees who work to promote sustainability, recycling and composting in their communities and at Solo facilities. Before joining Solo, she spent a combined six years as Corporate Counsel at Baxter International Inc. and as an Associate Attorney at Lewis, Rice & Fingersh in St. Louis, and Grippo & Elden in Chicago. She is a licensed attorney in the states of Illinois and Missouri and holds a J.D. from Notre Dame Law School in South Bend, IN and a B.S. in Economics from Westminster College in Salt Lake City, UT.



 

Steve Mahler, Design Manager, Caraustar Industries Inc. 

Steve is the Design Manager and Sustainable Package Development Manager for Caraustar Industries. With over 25 years experience in all phases of packaging, he brings his designer’s eye to the sustainability arena. As Sustainable Development Manager, Steve has continually supported his company’s efforts to develop more efficient and sustainable packages to best represent their clients and ensure that they are meeting today’s greener demands. Steve is also credited with several U.S. patents and copyrights, PPC Gold Awards, the DuPont Packaging Innovations Noteworthy Award, and Grammy Packaging nominations. During Caraustar’s membership in the SPC, Steve has participated on several committees and presented numerous sustainable design innovations. He is currently co-chairing the member led committee for Consumer Outreach & Education.



 

Matthew Realff, Ph.D, Professor, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Tech


Dr. Realff is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech and Program Director at the National Science Foundation. His broad research interests are in the areas of process design, simulation, scheduling, and control. He has specific interests that include the design and operation of processes that minimize waste production by recovery of useful products from waste streams, and the simultaneous scheduling and control of batch processes. His overall research goal is to automate the entire design process: the design or selection of molecules for desired product properties, the synthesis of reaction pathways and speratio operations, and the design and selection of processing equipment, combining fundamental chemical engineering science with an understanding of the methods of design.


 

Brad Rodgers, R&D Director of Sustainable Packaging & Advanced Materials Research, PepsiCo

Brad is a 25-year veteran of the plastics and packaging industry. He has spent much of his career working for major plastic manufacturers, where he’s developed polymers for use in numerous packaging applications. Currently, Brad is the R&D Director of Sustainable Packaging and Advanced Materials Research for PepsiCo Advanced Research, where his responsibilities include the development of next generation packaging materials. As of today, he holds 13 patents for various packaging applications and multiple more pending. Brad has authored or co-authored several papers and published articles in the area of barrier food packaging, and currently he’s working on the development of advanced barriers using nanotechnology and biopolymers. Brad has a degree in Polymer Chemistry from the University of Missouri-Rolla.



 

Jeff Wooster, Sustainability Leader, The Dow Chemical Company 

Jeff Wooster joined Dow in 1988 after receiving a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from Iowa State University of Science & Technology. He worked for five years in Polyolefins Product Research, and in 1993 he transferred to Plastics Technical Service & Development. In 2006 he became co-chair of Dow’s North American Sustainable Packaging Team and has been an active member of SPC since that time. Jeff enjoys collaborating with the entire value chain and is currently responsible for market focused sustainable packaging initiatives within the Performance Plastics business at Dow. He is passionate about sustainability and in addition to his work with the SPC serves as the lead Dow representative on Wal-Mart’s Packaging SVN, the American Chemistry Council’s Plastics Division Packaging Team, and the Flexible Packaging Association’s Sustainability Task Force. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of AMERIPEN. Jeff holds 44 U.S. and foreign patents and has published over 50 technical papers and presentations. He lives in Houston, Texas but enjoys traveling beyond Texas’ boundaries to enjoy his favorite hobbies of snow skiing and contributing to the economic development of the world’s top tourist destinations.