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The VOE Podcast is focusing on Earth Day, Friday, April 22. We’re talking to a leader in the sustainability arena, to someone who is really hoping to drive results in this space. That person is Kathleen Pitre, president of Beverage Packaging in North and Central America for Ball Corporation. The Daniels College of Business has had a great relationship with Ball Corporation, hosting CEO John Hayes for Voice of Experience in 2016, providing student consulting projects, guest speaking in classrooms. Kathleen has been with Ball for 18 years, much of it working on their sustainability efforts.
The VOE Podcast is an extension of Voices of Experience, the signature speaker series at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. Keep tuning in each month for more business insights from Daniels’ alumni voices of experience.
Transcript
Kristal Griffith:
Kathleen, we’re delighted to host you. Welcome to the VOE Podcast.
Kathleen Pitre:
Thanks Kristal. Great to be with you.
Kristal Griffith:
So before we get to our big topic of the day, I’d like people to, to know you. I know you went to Colorado state university for your bachelor’s and masters in technical and speech communications. You started your career at ball aerospace in communications, and then moved over to ball core in 2014. Can you share a little bit about your background, your career journey?
Kathleen Pitre:
Sure. As you mentioned I started in ball aerospace. I worked in our aerospace business for 11 years doing a variety of things, whether it was marketing, business development, government relations, customer relations, et cetera. And then in 2014, I moved over to the corporate side where I did corporate relations. That’s when I really got involved in sustainability and became our head of sustainability, which I did until, 2019, where I became the chief commercial officer, which is basically our head of sales for our global organization, as well as our chief sustainability officer. That was the first time that we formally put ability in sales together. And in September I started the job that I’m in now, which is president of our north and central America beverage packaging business.
Kristal Griffith:
Kathleen, I was gonna lead right into that. I’m curious what that means. I’m thinking specifically for our listeners, maybe our students, you, what does your job entail? What does that look like?
Kathleen Pitre:
We are the largest beverage canned manufacturer in the world. Ball’s North and Central America business that I run is, is the largest division within Ball. So if you live in the United States or you live in Canada or Mexico, Central America, almost half of the beverage cans made in those regions are made by Ball. This year our goal is to make and sell 60 billion aluminum beverage cans. So we make a lot of cans and, we fill them with energy drinks and Selzer and sparkling water and soda and, whatever you can think to put in a can, we will sell the can for it.
Kristal Griffith:
I love it. I love it. Yeah. I’ve seen cans all over the place. And I think at one point maybe there was some kind of crisis or something. And so you ended up putting water in them for a country that would a need. So I’ve seen you do all sorts of things like that for kind of a social good mission as well.
Kathleen Pitre:
Yes, our, we have several of our, uh, large customers like Molson Coors and Anheuser Bush and Beverage as well as, a craft brew customer, Oscar Blue. And we have disaster relief water programs where we donate the cans and they fill the cans and distribute them to people in need. It’s it is a great partnership.
Kristal Griffith:
Let’s get to our big topic of the day. Um, earth day, all corporation has put forth some ambitious sustainability goals in the past year. The company is calling it toward a perfect circle. It’s really emphasizing products being fully recyclable. So talk a little bit about that vision and where it came from.
Kathleen Pitre:
It’s actually even more ambitious than fully recyclable. So, so aluminum cans are already 100% recyclable. And what we’re saying with our, towards a perfect circle is if we actually want to address, the packaging waste crisis, we have to go beyond something just being quote recyclable. It needs to actually end up being recycled at a very, very high rate and the new product needs to be made in the idea of a perfect circle of 100% or as close to it as we can get recycled material. So for aluminum beverage cans, they’re already a hundred percent recyclable we have work to do because in the us, in particular, our recycling rate, isn’t very good. It’s, it’s by far the highest for cans than any other substrate, but still only around 50%. So we want that to get up to, um, 90% by 2030 is the goal that, that we’re calling for.
And then we wanna drive the recycled content rate of aluminum beverage cans up from the current in the us it’s around 73%. We wanna try to push that to 85% by 2030, and so that a lot of work and a lot of partnerships to make sure that every single can, that we make gets recycled and that we make sure that we keep that material in the loop and that it can become a can again and again and again. Aluminum is infinitely recyclable, which is unusual. So you can use the same material over and over endlessly without any loss of quality. And so it is a permanent material in that regard, and that’s really different from paper or plastic or other materials that degrade over time. Even if they’re recyclable, maybe you get only a few cycles and we should be able to use the same material over and over. And so our idea with that vision is to say, because the can, because of its inherent properties the can does well. We’re challenging ourselves to say, let’s prove to the world that real circularity is possible. And we don’t have to settle for just recyclable or very low levels of recycle content like 10 or 20%. Like that’s not, that is not going to make the kind of impact on the environ that, that we think as a, as a people we should be aiming for.
Kristal Griffith:
You hit, you hit on one of the questions. And I don’t know if our audience knows, but, you know, your point was the us doesn’t recycle as well as other countries. Um, I think we have Brazil 97% Germany, nearly a hundred percent. So it sounds like there is a kind of education component to this vision and partnerships. I think you mentioned how, what does that mean? What are you guys doing?
Kathleen Pitre:
I think it goes across several things. Um, there is absolutely an education component. One of the things that, that we think is important is, uh, because we’ve moved to single stream recycling in the us, it almost implies that all the materials are the same and they’re not, mm. Um, their, their, their value in a recycling stream is different. Their ability to be recycled, infinitely is different. You know, aluminum is, is really kind of the star in that case. And so there is a piece where we can say, should we focus our recycling efforts where we’re gonna get the most bang for the buck. And, and we certainly see aluminum as an opportunity for that. So there, that’s a really important component. There are also really important system system level, um, issue like access to recycling. There are huge parts of the country, probably half the country that does not have automatic access to curbside recycling.
And therefore, unfortunately, something we all kind of know about human nature is if something’s easy, people will do it. And if it’s hard, you’re gonna lose people on that journey. So there, there is a piece about access. And then the third piece is also about policy. And we can see in the states where there are policies that really support high recycling rates like extended producer responsibility laws, or, uh, deposit, um, systems. The recycling rate in general is much, much higher than in non deposit states. And so we think to actually get to that 90%, we need to address all of those areas, um, because we have a lot of improvement that we need to do, uh, across the country.
Kristal Griffith:
Absolutely. I was shocked. I happened to visit my mom, um, oh, this past weekend in Phoenix. And she was like, they don’t recycle here. And I was like, what do you mean they don’t recycle here, but yeah, to your point, I think in Colorado, specifically, we’re just used to it, you know, kind of every morning, all the bins were set out in my alley. Right. It’s just something we’re very familiar with. I didn’t realize it. Wasn’t, you know, Countrywide,
Kathleen Pitre:
Can I burst your bubble Kristal?
Kristal Griffith:
Oh, no. What are you gonna tell me, Kathleen?
Kathleen Pitre:
Colorado is actually a horrible recycling state. It’s really, it’s really sad. Certain Metro areas were quite good and certain areas, as you mentioned, where the homeowners association perhaps has an agreement with a recycling and waste haul. But, our recycling rate in the state is actually very, very low. We don’t have the kind of laws that actually support high recycling rates. And there are a lot of cities and counties and sections that we, again, we don’t have automatic access to curbside recycling, or there aren’t even municipal recycling program. It’s something that we’re spending a lot of time on. And actually, there’s, there’s some nice progress that’s starting to happen in the Colorado general assembly. I think, you know, if you live in Broomfield, like I do, or Boulder or Denver or Fort Collins, you probably feel really good about the state of recycling in Colorado, but the sum total of it is actually really not very good.
Kristal Griffith:
Wow. Well, that’s eye opening. I had no idea.
Kathleen Pitre:
I hate to burst your bubble.
Kristal Griffith:
That’s okay. That’s okay. That’s what we’re here for to educate even me. Right. Talk a little bit about this supply chain issue. Right. As I understand it, aluminum is the kind of cream of the crop. I know ball used to be in the glass business, but I think you’ve completely transitioned out of that because of the sustainability goal. So what can people do if they’re thinking about this holistically and to your point is, you know, should they be buying more aluminum products is plastic and glass not as great. What, what, what are some supply chain things you see that could, we should know?
Kathleen Pitre:
I think we at Ball have been in the glass and plastic and aluminum business. And so we know a lot about all three for very good reasons. And I’ll talk about a few of those in just a second. We are, are now only in the aluminum business. We are not in the glass business anymore, although we license the use of our logo. Um, so you can still see ball glass jars, uh, for sale in the supermarket for home canning. Um, they’re not, they’re not produced by us and then we got out of the plastic business, about 10 or 12 years ago. Part of that, like if you take a step and, and you think about the areas where the environmental impact of packaging shows up, you have the environmental impact of, of either making the material or extracting it from the ground.
Then you have the weight associated with the material. You have the process associated with making the package, and then you have that end of life where you have, um, recycling. So one of the things that we really love about aluminum as I already said, is that it’s a permanent material. And so, um, 75% of aluminum ever produced is use today. And if you think about that since 1880 or so, oh, that’s a, that’s an incredible stat that I think really helps people understand what’s different about aluminum. I, if you compare that to plastic, you know, 9% of plastic ever produced has been recycled once. Whoa, once. And so part of what’s different about that is because of the, what happens to plastic as it’s recycled it degrades. And so even if you recycle plastic, it tends to be more down cycling. So you could take a plastic bottle and turn it into yoga pants or turn it into a carpet, but that is the last stop for that material.
And then ultimately it ends up in a landfill or the ocean or wherever it ends up, whereas aluminum keeps giving back becoming something else of value. Um, and that’s the other thing that really differentiates aluminum. When you think about the supply chain, part of why we haven’t done a great job of recycling in this country is that the cost of recycling, a lot of materials outweighs the value of those materials. So for example, most recycling systems actually lose money, recycling glass in part, because of the weight of it in part because it breaks and it, uh, uh, can contaminate, um, the ability to recycle other materials. So aluminum is by far by far the most valuable material in the recycling stream. And it, it pays its own way and frankly, it actually pays for other things to be recycled. But it’s part of the problem is if the process and cost of recycling is not worth the yield, nobody want to do it.
It doesn’t work right? Like nobody’s in the business of losing money. And, and so that’s, that is one of the great things is the material value of recycled aluminum is incredibly high. The other thing that’s great is recycled aluminum is actually less expensive than starting from scratch with virgin aluminum, which requires mining and other things. And so it’s also an advantage because recycled plastic is much more expensive. Recycled aluminum is less expensive than virgin aluminum. So we’re really lucky because when you have the economics in favor of what also benefits the environment, that’s where you can really have a wind win. Because if you’re saying, well, we need to do something good for the environment, but the economic cost of that is, is too burdensome. It it’s hard to make progress. So it’s part of why we’ve chosen to really focus on aluminum because we think it can be an economic and an environmental and a social win.
Kristal Griffith:
I love it. Talk a little bit about any advice you have for kind of everyday consumers, maybe they’re things that you guys educate ball employees on, or you do yourself at home. Kathleen, what kind of things would you want other people to know?
Kathleen Pitre:
I mean for one thing, I think it really does matter the package that you choose. Um, the, the impact of that package and its recyclability is not the same. So one it won’t surprise you, I would say for God’s sake, whatever you can buy, buy it in aluminum. Sure. Equally, and, and, and perhaps even more importantly, if you use aluminum, if you use use an aluminum can bottle cup more than any other package, recycling, aluminum is important. And one thing I didn’t mention earlier is recycled aluminum also saves 95% of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with that product. So it is, I know sometimes as we talked about access is, is challenging. You know, if you go to the gas station and you’re filling up your car, don’t throw the cans in the trash take ’em home, put ’em in a, my husband laughs at me because I’m, I have gloves and I’m always picking cans out of the trash because I just can’t stand to see them there. So, you know, if you’re hiking, pack it in, pack it out, what, whatever it takes, um, especially for aluminum making a little bit of extra effort to make sure that that ends up in the recycling bin is well well worth it. I, if you think about that, 75% of aluminum ever produced is still in use today. Any of us who are throwing cans away are responsible for some of that missing 25% and, and I’d rather be part of the group that’s keeping that material in use.
Kristal Griffith:
Absolutely. I was thinking also, you know, on the aspect of maybe influencing your legislators or your representatives, is that something the average person can do or if they don’t have access to recycling, ask for it, are there things like that that could really be helping our earth?
Kathleen Pitre:
Yes, absolutely. You know, one of the things that, that we’re looking at right now and, and there’s actually some, some things going on in, in the Colorado, a general assembly, um, the, the concept of extended producer responsibility, I think is a good one be. And, and what that means is that the producer of a product is more responsible for the cost associated with the end of life of that product. And, and part of why we have so many products that are not recyclable or are expensive or difficult to recycle that become a burden on state and local governments. And the environment is because the cost associated with that is born by society rather than the producer. And so I think there is a concept where getting involved in policy can make a big difference because, um, if, if producers pick substrates that are by definition, recyclable and, and work well in recycling systems, that could help a lot.
Um, also if, you know, there are things like, as I said earlier, deposit systems where you, you pay a little bit when you buy the can, but you get, you get the money back when you recycle the can. Um, and having, you know, recycling laws, if, if you’re in a community that doesn’t have recycling talk to your city council and, and, and make the case that, you know, access is a really important part of this. So I think is personal action that we can take. And then there also is sort of collective action and, and partnership that we can also take. Um, one of the things that we’re doing and, and hopefully if people have seen it, if you’re in the Denver area is a partnership with Ballina and a huge part of that, um, with Croke sports and entertainment to really make a case for recycling in, um, venues like sports arenas, where, you know, sometimes people just leave the stuff right there in the seat and they walk away and it’s like, well, someone will take care of that. Someone will recycle it hopefully, or, or whatever the case is. And so trying to engage people on like, take the action, it’s very easy and it’s worth it. And, and in the case of, you know, being at a nuggets or an AVS game, you can make, make it a little bit of fun too.
Kristal Griffith:
I mean, for heaven sake, you walked all the way to your seat, surely you can walk your…
Kathleen Pitre:
Just take your aluminum cup or your can, or your bottle and put it in the recycling bed. We actually now really cool fun people who go through up and down the stairs with backpacks, where you can hand them really your aluminum can right from your seat and they’ll, they’ll take it and ensure that it’s recycled.
Kristal Griffith:
How cool is that? Obviously I need to get to a game. I haven’t seen that yet.
Before we kind of, uh, divert from this topic, I wanna talk to you a little bit about, um, more about this vision. So not only is ball kind of in this space from a, uh, product standpoint, but also, um, setting this goal of being net zero in line with the goals of the Paris agreement. So talk a little bit about what that means, cuz that seems like a very bold statement from Ball.
Kathleen Pitre:
It is, it is so, so there’s a couple things. One, you know, we have always been really involved in climate action in our, in our industry and, and recognizing the importance of that. And so we set a science based target a couple of years ago, which, which is a very involved process, which essentially says you’re making sure that you’re doing, what is your fair share of key keeping us within the one and a half degree, centigrade. So we’ve established a science based target that, that we’re working towards 2030. We recognize that already the science and the need is moving beyond that. And so the concept of net zero is obviously super important and for an industry like ours, very challenging. And so one of the things that I’m really excited about is we have basically said we’re up for the challenge and we’re going to put a lot of time and resources and some of our best people on this.
And so we’ve already done a lot of work on renewable energy. So here in the U.S. a hundred percent of our electricity is renewable energy. So that’s a really very significant chunk of our emissions, as we talked about already, the importance of recycling and recycle content is for the carbon footprint of our product. We’re also looking at how can we change our manufacturing processes and our equipment. And so, um, the division that I work in, we have now an entire group of engineers that the only thing that they work on is how do we, you know, make all of our process is more energy efficient and how do we use less also water, which is not related to net zero, but really engineering, um, in, from the beginning. And we’re building a lot of new plants because of the growth of aluminum packaging.
And so it gives us a great opportunity to really, uh, work with new equipment and new processes so that we can make a, make a big difference. And so we’re committed to climate action as well as circularity. And it’s really fun to put our, our best and brightest folks on the task. And it’s also really meaningful work. I mean it’s really inspiring if you’re a, a person who who cares about the environment or cares about people. I was just talking to someone on our team the other day. And he said, I I’m about to have my first grandchild. And it, it is incredibly meaningful to him to be working on things that, that help him feel that, you know, the world that his, his grandchild will inherit will be the beautiful world that, that we grew up with.
Kristal Griffith:
Let’s hope. I think that’s amazing. So Kathleen, as you know, Daniels is known for teaching ethical leadership and dedication to the public. Good. So how do these values factor in to your role as a leader? How do you conduct business responsibly?
Kathleen Pitre:
Yeah. So one of the things that I I love about working at Ball is we generally believe that you can do good and do well at this same time. And as someone who’s worked in kind, you know, corporate social responsibility and sustainability for a long time, the concept that by definition environmental improvement or action is bad for economic growth or the environment or whatever the case is. I just find sad and not to be true. And so I think one of the things that I love about Ball, as I said, and about our mindset is in many ways we can and are proving every day that that’s not true. We’re in a period of incredible growth right now. The can is winning. Consumers are choosing the can more than any other substrate and our customers are as well.
We’re creating jobs and we’re helping to get renewable energy added to the grid. So I think for me it’s much more exciting to think about how to pair economic prosperity and social justice and social action and environmental progress. And so that’s really, you know, what we talk about here at ball and what we build into our processes. So, I mean, even now when a project comes to me, part of what we look at is are we meeting the environmental objectives that we’ve set? Are we, do we have an opportunity to exceed those? Do we have an opportunity to even on the diversity and inclusion front, you know, we’re building new plants and it’s like, let’s make sure that we are representing those communities and, and creating opportunity for people who maybe previously didn’t have opportunity. So I, I find it incredibly energizing and I think our employees and our leadership team do too, because, you know it’s great to make money and have a successful business. And when you can do that at the same time as do things that are personally really meaningful. That’s just an exciting place to be.
Kristal Griffith:
Absolutely. We talk about it here at Daniels, the triple bottom line, the people, the planet, the profit, and we want all three, don’t do one without the other. So I love that.
Kathleen Pitre:
And you don’t have to choose, you can have it all.
Kristal Griffith:
You got it. Thank you so much, Kathleen. I appreciate your time.
Kathleen Pitre:
Thank you. Great to be with you, Kristal.
Kristal Griffith:
This has been the VOE Podcast, produced by the Daniels College of Business and sponsored by U.S. Bank. Music by Joshua Muetzel, music composition graduate student at the Lamont School of Music. Join us next time for more business insights from our community. In the meantime, visit Daniels.du.edu/voe-podcast, and please remember to like, follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.