Martha Issa serves as the Senior Director of Sustainability at Veritiv where she applies her engineering and marketing background to strategize, design, and implement Veritiv’s sustainable product footprint. Based in Atlanta, GA, Veritiv is a leading North American business-to-business distribution solutions company. Previously, Martha served in management roles within Veritiv’s Facility Solutions and Marketing teams. She has been with Veritiv for more than 15 years developing and implementing enterprise-wide strategies.

John Shegerian: It’s the latest Impact Podcast right into your inbox each week. Subscribe by entering your email address at impactpodcast.com to make sure you never miss an interview. This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy. It is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com. This episode of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Closed Loop Partners. Closed Loop Partners is a leading circular economy investor in the United States with an extensive network of Fortune 500 corporate investors, family offices, institutional investors, industry experts, and impact partners. Closed Loop’s platform spans the arc of capital from venture capital to private equity, bridging gaps and fostering synergies to scale the circular economy. To find Closed Loop Partners, please go to www.closedlooppartners.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and I’m so honored to have with us today Martha Issa. She’s the Senior Director of Sustainability at Veritiv. Welcome, Martha, to the Impact Podcast.

Martha Issa: Thank you so much. I’m so excited about this. We were just free talking a little bit about how we got to this place and we’re talking here. I’m more than thrilled to start this conversation. Thanks for inviting me and reaching out, and that we were able to connect them, so thrilled.

John: Of course. I’m thrilled, likewise. Martha, before we get talking about all the important sustainability initiatives that you have going in Veritiv, can you please share your background story? Where were you born? How did you get on this very fascinating and important journey that you’re on?

Martha: Thank you. Yes, it’s interesting because when I get this question about, ‘where are you from?’, I’m from Atlanta. I live in Atlanta. Originally, I am from El Salvador. I was born in El Salvador, Central America. It’s a beautiful country. I moved to the US 22 years ago, following the love of my life and we got married. We had an 11-year old son. It’s been an amazing journey. In that whole story of moving my career, my journey professionally has had a lot of turns. By profession, I’m a chemical engineer. Being in sustainability right now is very exciting. Going a little bit to my roots, and understanding substrates and chemicals but that was my professional degree. Most of my career has been in marketing. Marketing communications has been really my passion. If there’s anything that stays with me through my career, from engineering, marketing, product development and product sourcing, now, in sustainability, what stays with me is solving problems. The key to everything that I do is this ‘natural curiosity’ that I’ve always had since I was a little girl in El Salvador. Trying to figure out where is Santa Claus, and now, trying to figure out how do I solve this plastics problem. I think that natural curiosity has been a highlight throughout my life and my career.

John: It served you well, let’s just say that. It served you well. You and I know sustainability now in terms of Senior Director of Sustainability, Chief Sustainability Officers, Chief Impact Officers, can be read narrowly or broadly. In terms of your role as Senior Director of Sustainability at Veritiv, how is the word and your title read? Is it on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter, year-to-year basis? Is sustainability a broad initiative at Veritiv? Or is it more narrowly read? And how, as a leader, do you approach it on a regular basis?

Martha: Yes, that’s a great question because sustainability can mean so many things. What I have discovered is, I can be in a very scientific area of sustainability, measuring greenhouse gas emissions, or you can be more into the innovation production, or you can be more on the communication side and nonprofit areas. For us, we decided for sustainability is, we feel this great responsibility of, six billion dollars, we mentioned in sales. Half of that is in packaging materials that can end up in a landfill or in the ocean. We feel this huge responsibility of what is our role and what can we do to address that. At the same time, we are a for-profit company. The way that we look at sustainability is how we balance those two. With that, what we have is like an ESG working group. As Senior Director of Sustainability, my role is, it’s almost like orchestrating and planting the seed and objectives, but then the working group has its own areas of development and goals, fleet and operations. An operations leader would lead that, or D&I, or community engagement, their different leaders within the company that are responsible for those specific goals. Then, for me, I have the title of Sustainability, so I kind of orchestrate everything that we’re doing, putting it together so that our customers can understand what is our mission with sustainability and also work with our suppliers. So, that is your working group. As Senior Director of Sustainability, what I do is more on the products and services. My role is everyday in front of customers, suppliers, or people in the industry to figure out: How can we serve our customers better? How can we have a lower impact on the environment, be in front of the problems instead of behind, and be leaders in this space?

John: Understood. For our listeners and viewers, just for some context, a Veritiv has about 4,500 or so on employees, and about six and a half billion dollars in sales, and it’s a global brand.

Martha: Yes, we follow our customers. We’re a little bit behind the scenes. We were basically the sign and source and distribute all these packaging materials. We also have a line of janitorial supplies and printing paper. The big brands that you would normally know, we are behind those big brands, helping them innovate in their packaging materials, making sure that the products are going to get to their facilities and manufacturing and then get out to the market in the best way possible with the least impact on the environment as possible. With that, yes, we are a private company now. But our last public record, of course, the six billion dollar figure that you mentioned, and 4,500 close to 5,000 employees now. We’re following our customers, like I said. Globally, we have customers that have manufacturing in Asia. We have a team. The majority of our business is going to be in the US and Mexico but we do have footprint and others.

John: Being that you’re a global brand, one of the biggest environmental challenges that we have now on this planet is the single-use plastics and the appropriate recycling or disposal of those plastics. What’s your vision of the path forward from a packaging perspective on how we should be dealing with single-use plastics now and in the years to come?

Martha: Yes. I mean, it could be a very daunting problem to solve and where to start. When you look at packaging and plastic pollution in general, 36% of the total waste and plastic comes from packaging. There’s good news and bad news with that. The bad news is 36% of the pollution and plastic comes from packaging, but the good news is that it’s so large that there’s so many resources that are being invested because of that, organizations, innovations. I think the solution for that is going to come from that collaboration. If I had to summarize it, two areas. One is innovation, and this is my biggest passion. As a chemical engineer, I totally believe that the solution to the plastic problem is already out there. There’s technology that just waiting there to be at a scale that we can all use it. I think the first thing is innovation and how we can rally around scientists and companies that are innovating on that. The second part is more around the collaboration because we all have to agree on how we’re going to prioritize the solution. There’s so many problems or so many different substrates and plastics that require different technology. Like, where do we start? So having that collaboration with our customers, prioritizing what are their biggest concerns? Is that plastic containers? Is it stretch film? Is it cushioning or bubble wrap? Is it Styrofoam? Where do we start? Then, with our suppliers, looking at the resources that they’re… When I say suppliers for us, would be all the large manufacturers of plastic that actually manufacture the stretch film or the plastic containers. We collaborate with them bringing innovation and that innovation going to our customer. So that’s how I see this big problem; innovation, collaboration.

John: When you spoke about technology, what technology are you excited about that’s going to help us get through to the other side of this big problem?

Martha: The technology that I’m seeing developing is in two specific areas. One is the resin itself, with a lot of testing around additives. I know the word ‘additives’ sounds like it’s greenwashing, and what exactly does it do? But that is a piece that I have a lot of confidence in. It’s already there, some of the technology. Imagine when you have stitches and that plastic disappears. So there’s already technology that’s nascent that I think we can utilize and leverage. Then, the other piece is controversial in some places, but chemical recycling. Right now, it’s not there in terms of the proper collection and regenerating more emissions by making that again. So I think those two pieces of technology, if we can get them to a place that’s scalable and profitable, we can revolutionize the space.

John: As a chemist, do you believe the chemical side of it has good efficacy that you’re excited about?

Martha: Yes.

John: As a chemical engineer. You’re a specialist. That’s it.

Martha: Yes, a chemical engineer, absolutely. My business side is also concerned. Like, can we do this economically? But in terms of technology, it’s there. The technology is there. I’m saying all this, but before we even get to that, my first pass, and I tell customers and everyone the same, is just useless, make less of a problem. But you’re asking me about the technologies, and I’m going to say, once it’s there, there are ways that we can solve it.

John: Right. But like you said, be more intentional. Now that we all know that there’s a problem, let’s all be more intentional in our use of it. I think that’s a great starting point. But let’s now go back to another thing that you just mentioned, infrastructure and ability… Historically, in North America, let’s just say, the recycling infrastructure on all products, this is not just the plastic issue, has been lumpy at best to entice and encourage the circularity of all products. How is that changing or evolving when it comes to single-use plastics from where you sit?

Martha: I think it’s lower than I would like it to be. But when I came to this role two years ago, and again that problem-solving mindset is like looking at the root cause, because what I kept hearing is, there’s not enough infrastructure. The two root causes of that that I found are: one is the logistics side of it, just the collection, especially for hard-to-recycle materials. We sell a lot of stretch film, so that’s a very difficult store drop-off type of collection across the country. Logistics and collecting the materials is a big problem. It doesn’t even get to the recycler to have volume to sell. Then, the second is supply and demand. There’s not enough infrastructure because there are not enough people interested in investing in something that’s not going to make money. We need to create that demand so that more people are interested in investing in that infrastructure. So, to solve the demand problem and the logistics problems, there are many thoughts and lines of thought on how we can do that. I mean, can we do that as private companies getting more involved? There are some use cases of that, companies getting together and building a whole recycling facility. Then, there are others, like what we’re trying to do here at Veritiv, through a commodity and a project for recyclers that they wouldn’t have the funds to invest in that new technology and expand the amount of plastic that they’re recycling because it doesn’t have enough value for them to sell it. We buy a commodity that’s called attributes of recycled content. For lack of a better word and simplifying, it’s like a plastic credit. We get that claim, we’re investing in infrastructure, and they get those funds for that project. That’s another way. There’s one way of solving the problem. We all get together as private companies helping or the government’s get involved. So that’s another way to solve the demand and logistics problem.

John: Speak a little bit about the government getting involved and regulations, are there regulations in place that encourage single-use plastic recycling not enough and are there upcoming regulations that you’re excited about that are going to do more to help encourage the responsible recycling of single-use plastics?

Martha: Yes. Everyone is trying to do the right thing. That’s why I love so much this job, talking to so many people that are very passionate, action-oriented. Regulations, for example in New Jersey. It’s very simple. You have to have 10% recycled content in all your bags. It was fast, it’s there, and it’s going to be implemented 25. We already registered our plastic containers. That is going to generate demand of that recycled content. That is very simple one way of doing that. I think to make a difference in more consistent and a little bit easier on organizations across all states is, the extended producer responsibility regulations that are being proposed. There’s a lot of examples in Europe and Canada. I think it’s a great example of how that can work. I think that is definitely a way that it’s going to generate the demand and simplify it for companies like ours and big brands, because you have a single point of contact of providing the data, standardized said, and look where your investments are going to go. It’s going to be slow, my prediction here. It’s going to be a little bit slow, but the more that we can collaborate, and if states could collaborate more, it would be a lot easier.

John: It’s always too slow in the seats that you and I said. It’s always too slow. Is New Jersey the paradigm that you like the most so much? So far, is there other states that are doing as well, or have some other great regulation that you’re really excited about that you hope gets picked up by others?

Martha: Yes. I like New Jersey in the sense that it’s simple and it’s there. What I’m concerned is if everyone starts doing their own, then it becomes a problem and a very complex way for us to collaborate and track.

John: That’s for quilt.

Martha: It becomes a little bit difficult to track. What is it for each one, and what do you have to comply with the different location? So, I like the speed and the simplicity, not so much like having every state and municipalities. There’s certain municipalities in California that had a stand on styrofoam cups or plastic ware and it’s just one location. It’s very difficult for organizations. They were going to allow this come to this warehouse but then the truck doesn’t go to this other place. So, the more that we can standardize it is better. Answering your question, I would say, the EPR approach is the best because I understand why it’s not going to be the same in every place, each municipality has different type of waste. You can’t have banning products, put in standards, and recycled content minimums or maximums, the same everywhere because some people might be dealing with more glass, some people might be dealing with more disposables with cutlery than others. It depends on that. But then EPR, going through that one organization that collects information, standardized is what you have to report and how investments will be deployed.

John: Let’s go over this, Martha. There’s a challenge to a state-by-state approach because it creates, as you say, complexity and difficulty to track and manage. I get it because they’ve done that in the EPR side of electronics world. So, I’ve lived it on the electronic side. As you said, there’s some wisdom to a state-by-state approach or municipality approach because there is a uniqueness and idiosyncrasies in those areas, regions, and municipalities that exist in those but maybe not in others. Is there room for federal legislation in a federally EPR approach that could help standardize it, make it easier, and help get the word out faster to help accelerate more responsible single-use plastic recycling?

Martha: Well, I said, I could give you my personal view. This is my personal view.

John: Yeah, of course. You’re here.

Martha: I do think that a federal approach, this is for a companies and if you do business across states, the more standardized a federal approach is the best approach. It’s lower, of course, because you didn’t have to get more. And with my personal opinion, what I was going to mention with this is that, being here 20-something years, but I was not born here and most of my family are outside of El Salvador. My sister did lives in Europe and other one in Asia. So I have a great appreciation of this country and the way that we work together. In country where the individual rights are so respected, then as normal that these regulations are going to go slower. That’s why I think Federal Regulation would be the best approach, but understanding that here, when you have to go through all this nuances of the individual rights and you’re going to have people posting two different things and you can’t impose certain things on others, you have to be conscious that the states are probably going to have the ones leading, if we want this to go a little bit faster.

John: Makes sense. For our listeners and viewers who have just joined us, we’ve got Martha Issa with us today. She’s a Senior Director of Sustainability at Veritiv. To find Martha and her colleagues and all the important impactful work they’re doing in sustainability, please go to www.veritiv.com. Martha, talk a little bit about the lack of knowledge, the apathy, and benign neglect that exists in the marketplace, which makes recycling of all product, not just plastics but all products, including electronics and sustainability a harder sell than other things that are in the culture and society.

Martha: As an industry, I really like being part of organizations that have a lot more resources than we would have to educate and have the message out there. I think the recycling message was so strong for years and what more we can do around that, but then also the message about reusing and reducing, with clothing, buy less and keep your jeans longer. So that message, I think, there are organizations like the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, Merritt Benham, and others that are doing this good job of educating and trying to get the message out there from a packaging perspective. But then, in general, I think it’s on all of us to get more informed as parents and as educators, and make sure that our kids and the next generation have the right information. I get a lot of people was presenting in the Chamber of Commerce, I’m not going to mention what city, but someone stood up and said, “Why should I care about greenhouse gas emissions if nature doesn’t care?” He was mentioning a volcano that exploded and generated more greenhouse gas emissions than what he’s ever going to produce in three lifetimes or some statistic like that. So basically he’s saying, ‘This problem is too big or nature doesn’t care, so I’m not going to care.’ You hear that type of position, and how do you address that and create the right awareness so that everyone can do their part in recycling and educating? My approach to that really is pretty much what I would do with my 11-year-old. The best advice I got when he started to get in those very hard positions on, ‘I don’t believe in this,’ is to have them research. When someone has that hard stance, you have to evaluate if someone’s really interested in your answer, if they just have their position, and no matter what, you’re not going to convince them. But if they’re in a position of listening, I think that giving the resources out there for people to learn is the best approach. Like, don’t believe me, here’s two different opposing positions and here’s the reality between those two. The more information that we can have out there on what’s happening in our glaciers, what’s happening with global warming, what is the science behind it, and not just from one report but several of them. What’s the impact? So, information available and public that we can put out there. That’s why I really like that we collaborate with organizations that have the ability to put that impartial, objective information. The best approach is just to do your research and provide information out there for people to make their own decisions.

John: Agreed. I like you have spoken in front of organizations, and that’s part of what we do, and that’s part of our job and our passion. I think less and less of these more anomalous people like that, and I think the more people we meet, no matter where they’re from, or what their political ideology is, or the geography of where they live, it seems as though more and more people are all agreed upon certain base tenets that they all want to drink cleaner water. They want their family, their spouses, their children, their parents, to drink cleaner water, breathe cleaner air, and leave behind a better environment than they inherited themselves. Like you said, there’s an information gap out there. Of course, there are always naysayers and folks that love to polarize all types of issues. But I’m finding over this journey, there’s less and less of those, and more and more people that want to support the great efforts that you and your colleagues at Veritiv are making to make the world a better place. What we’re doing in our company, and what other sustainable and like-minded companies are doing, I think there’s more people supporting us now. But, like you said, getting the information out there is probably one of the greatest challenges. Talk a little bit about some of your favorite collaborations. You mentioned collaboration a couple of times during this interview. Share what are some of your favorite collaborations, because it’s important that folks understand that we don’t have to go all alone as a brand and as a messenger of good. We can collaborate and actually exponentially create and effectuate more impactful and greater change in a much expedited way.

Martha: Absolutely. I’m glad you mentioned that. Most people are in a place where they ask, ‘What can I do?’ I think the hardest question is, like, ‘Where to start?’ ‘What should I be doing?’ That’s the question we get the most, and the confusion. ‘What regulations should I follow?’ ‘I want to have net zero and I want zero waste. How can I get there?’ The collaborations for us, I can talk about two types of collaborations that I enjoy the most and then one that’s like my pride and joy, the pinnacle of collaboration so far. One is, every day, with our customers that are asking us, they have their big large brands that have these goals for 2030 and they don’t know where to start. They are doing a lot with their own operations but not necessarily with packaging, and when it comes to what we call tertiary packaging, the boxes and what wraps the pallets. That collaboration happens every day. We walk them through, how you don’t need this much packaging, can we redesign it, reduce? I said many times, reducing is the first step. We help them also figure out anything that they can automate so that it could be easier and more measurable because you reduce waste with automation. We help them look at new solutions, we provide them reports. So that collaboration happens all the time, and that’s the one that I enjoy a lot because it happens every day in everything we do. The other collaboration is on the innovation side. Like I mentioned, two years ago, the first thing people, there’s not enough infrastructure, we can’t give you recycled content stretch film. We have to solve it. How is it possible that we can’t solve this problem together? So meeting with our two major manufacturers of stretch film, looking at price, looking at sourcing, what type of resin they needed to buy, can we test it? And then looking at customers that were willing to be the pioneers and testing some of these. Having all suppliers, manufacturers of the resin, and customers all working together, we were able to bring the first machine-grade stretch film that had 30% post-consumer recycled content in it. That has been a great, great way of how the brands, our customers, manufacturers, and resin producers coming together to do that. Now, we’re working more. We’re working on how we’re going to take that, recycle it, and bring it back to the recycler. It’s the next level of the collaboration and it’s closing the loop there.

John: That’s so exciting. Do you and your team at Veritiv produce a sustainability report every year?

Martha: Yeah. We have like our corporate social responsibility report. We just published. Time is flying. In April, we just published our 2023. It’s the third year that we are reporting our corporate social responsibility report. Then, we’re fine tuning a lot of that also, just preparing for Regulatory Compliance or the information that our customers want. We have also product level reporting that’s not public, but it’s specific to our customers.

John: And that report lives in perpetuity up on the Veritiv website?

Martha: Yes, they can find more information there. Just go to EcoScore, and then our customers can reach out, and we can help them with that.

John: How long, Martha, have you been in the Senior Director of Sustainability role at Veritiv?

Martha: It’s going to be two years in April. I’ve been with the company for 17 years. Veritiv is… The green is in my blood.

John: You’ve been doing it two years, which is long enough to get your feet underneath to you and build momentum. What are you excited about for the next two years coming? What gets you out of bed and gets your blood flowing every day with regards to the progress you’re going to be able to make in the next two years with your colleagues at Veritiv?

Martha: What makes me so excited? I guess I was all giddy with the post-consumer recycled content and innovation. I think innovation is what really excites me, what’s coming and the impact that we can make, and having a seat at the table on this solution. You can be out there. Of course, everyone has a part in this, people there are making the regulations and funding for other things. But here, it’s like millions of tons of plastic that we can take out of the environment. Just collaborating with our customers and looking at new innovations that are coming down the pike, that’s what excites me the most. It’s what’s coming, and keeping the collaboration with our customers, organizations, and suppliers.

John: That’s so awesome. As you and I know, Martha, in sustainability, there’s no finish line. It’s just a journey. So I just want you to know, you’re always welcome back on the Impact Podcast to continue to share your journey in sustainability at Veritiv, and all the great work you and your colleagues are doing there to make single-use plastic more circular. That’s such an important mission and such an important opportunity for the environment and for the world. For our listeners and viewers, to find Martha and all her colleagues at Veritiv and all the important and impactful work they’re doing, please go to www.veritiv.com. Martha Issa, thank you so much for your time today but more importantly, thank you for all the great work you’re doing at Veritiv and for making the world a better place.

Martha: Thank you so much for having me. It’s great.

John: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking platform revolutionizing the talent booking industry. With thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent for speeches, custom experiences, live streams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com. This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.