Sustainability legislation and regulations are moving quickly. As the sustainability landscape continues to evolve around the world, staying current and adopting innovative processes, designs and materials are essential.
Sonoco’s in-house team of sustainability experts help customers, suppliers and other business partners align with mandates by:
- Ensuring compliant packaging through strategic partnerships
- Staying educated with regularly updated resources
- Equipping customers with a cross-functional network
Ensuring Compliant Packaging Through Strategic Partnerships
“New packaging legislation and regulation is a journey we all have to take together,” says Manager of Sustainability and Industry Affairs, Skye Oudemans. Monitoring the current landscape and how it impacts our customers, suppliers and consumers is increasingly important. At Sonoco, we focus on understanding:
- What legislation, regulations and trends are on the horizon
- Current political and corporate strategies
- Themes and goals discussed
- How topics are being organized
Trade-Association Partnerships
Sonoco’s sustainability team identifies specific areas where it’s appropriate to contribute and get involved. AMERIPEN, PCPA, EUROPEN, ABRE and other trade associations help streamline work in this fast-moving landscape that the packaging industry is navigating together.
In a pre-competitive environment, Sonoco collaborates with other association members to establish best practices and standard formats and, in turn, identifies valuable information that guides our business partners and customers.
Policy-Maker Partnerships
Our sustainability experts closely watch packaging legislation as it is being proposed and developed. Each global region is at different stages of the packaging journey. For example, Europe is several decades into Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes for packaging, while other regions like the U.S. are only starting to implement EPR and develop producer responsibility organizations (PROs).
When deemed appropriate, we contribute to legislation or regulations by commenting directly, joining meetings and workshops through our trade associations or by working alongside government officials and policy makers.
When legislation is in process, we prioritize informing business units impacted through our internal educational programs and resources.
After legislation is passed, we share details with appropriate partners, build compliance into our processes and answer questions from customers and business partners using our streamlined communication channels.
Third-Party Partnerships
We partner with consulting firms and other third-party firms to monitor, track and collect policies and regulations important to our customers and business units. Then, we streamline this documentation to ensure relevant information is properly communicated and available to those in the impacted regions.
Staying Educated With Regularly Updated Resources
While sustainability is a broad area, it’s certainly not a new challenge for Sonoco. Creating proactive tools makes keeping everyone informed and educated easier.
By prioritizing building relationships, the Sustainability team promotes information sharing, proactive sustainability conversations and ongoing educational opportunities. After assessing what impacts our business units, the team summarizes the details and shares it with the affected regions and interested parties.
Internal Sustainability Site
Oudemans explains, “As the head of our team, Scott Byrne pushed for us to centralize all the information into a single resource, helping us gain a better understanding of what questions people are asking and what concerns they may have.” Having this information accessible to anyone at Sonoco creates a valuable starting point for sustainability and regulatory questions.
“We are working hard to be in the right places for people to find us and our resources,” says Oudemans. Simplifying how stakeholders find and share the most current information, this internal site acts as a one-stop designation for our internal stakeholders with features like:
- Regional overviews of evolving developments, compliance expectations and policy trends
- Related documentation and/or data
- Related industry resources and/or publications
Responsible for organizing, coordinating and updating this site, Sustainability Specialist Neha Reddy Alle coordinates with Oudemans to review and revise content monthly, ensuring Sonoco customers and business partners have the right information to make decisions on packaging materials, designs and more.
Since Sonoco’s transformation into a Consumer and Industrial Packaging business structure, this internal site has provided consistent communication between the Sustainability team and Sonoco teammates.
Sustainability Request Forms
To get the right question to the right person quickly, the Sustainability team fields requests through several internal forms. Each completed form is automatically categorized by region and business unit.
Housed on Sonoco’s intranet, the team can easily track requests, update requesters, spot trending concerns and communicate it all from one spot. From 2025 to 2026, form submissions have nearly quadrupled. As a result, Sustainability team members can spend more time directly answering specific customer questions.
In the Loop Webinars
“Our goal is to make sustainability information useful,” said Oudemans. Hosted and coordinated by Alle, the Sustainability team hosts webinars several times throughout the year to:
- Answer questions from customers and Sonoco colleagues
- Add knowledge around current sustainability trends
- Discuss trends within the packaging industry
Each webinar in the series builds on the previous one, starting with the basics and then diving deeper into how we monitor, track and support customers and other stakeholders. When it makes sense, we pair a Sonoco representative with a third party or association member to offer the industry perspective on topics.
Sustainability 101 Deck
Sustainability is not just checking a box. It’s a critical piece of how Sonoco supports customers and our own business units. The team supports customer-facing team members with a ‘Sustainability 101’ deck to ensure they are able to clearly communicate how Sonoco supports customer needs and requests.
With an overview of sustainability concepts, terminology, processes and more, this resource provides a uniform resource for training, communications and other business needs.
Sustainability Chat Bot
“We are streamlining processes to help ensure people can find the answers they need quicker,” explains Alle. In coordination with Sonoco’s Information Technology (IT) group, the team created a chat bot to field sustainability surveys and provide responses based on the corresponding sustainability documents.
As this tool continues to progress, the team can respond faster to general requests and discover other opportunities to find other solutions that streamline internal processes.
Equipping Customers With a Cross-Functional Network
Building cross-functional relationships helps ensure the right people have access to the latest updates. Through Sonoco sustainability resources and designated regional experts, we’re equipping every customer with a contact point to support specific business needs around the world.
In the UK, Europe and North America, Oudemans helps stakeholders navigate transformative data and reporting requirements. She says, “Our Consumer and Industrial business structures offers tremendous value, as we can now internally align and harmonize data, data collection, data analysis and data reporting for each global region.”
In South America, a designated team member gathers sustainability information that impacts customers and business units operating within this region. With Brazil’s Reverse Logistics spreading responsibility between the packaging producer, brand owner and consumer, reaching government-set targets is becoming a bigger concern. Sonoco makes navigating this shared responsibility easier with third-party partnerships that support proper data collection and reporting.
After Oudemans and team collect regional sustainability information, Alle regularly updates Sonoco’s internal sustainability site to ensure business partners have access to the most current information that impacts customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.
Partner With a Packaging Provider Who Offers In-House Sustainability Expertise
“We’re known for being very good at making packaging, but Sonoco offers much more than packaging,” says Oudemans. As we build processes that encourage cross-functional collaboration, we’re creating in-house sustainability expertise that advances sustainability goals and ensures compliance with the right materials, designs and more.
Learn more about our sustainability services and offerings!
