My guest today is Joanna Gilroy. Jo is Head of Sustainability at Bunzl plc, one of the world’s leading distributors and a FTSE100 company. Throughout her time at Bunzl, Jo has pioneered an open, collaborative approach to finding solutions for packaging waste in the catering and hospitality industry. By building strong partnerships throughout the industry, from manufacture to disposal, Jo has been instrumental in developing new credible, transparent and cost-effective waste solutions for her customers.

I spoke to Jo online from her home in London.

We talk about childhood influences of go-getting parents, sibling rivalry and the frustration of not knowing what she wanted to be in a household of people who’d always had clarity. We talk about what she learned from teaching that she now applies in business, and where her passion for sustainability came from. We also talk about the critical importance of recruiting executives to your fan club, about her preference for mobilising a movement for sustainability across an organisation rather than building a dedicated team. And we talk about how her quest to address packaging waste has taken her from prosaic day-to-day operations to lobbying for changes in legislation.

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