Omar Asali Of Ranpak On How They Are Breaking the Cycle of Non-Renewable Consumption

An Interview With Monica Sanders

Change is hard. Change is one of those things that’s easy to talk about, but really difficult to do. People are creatures of habit, and we all love to do things we’ve done before. But when you’re trying to be a catalyst for change, it often feels like an uphill battle.

Although the United States has had a long trend of non-renewable consumption, the tides are turning. Many companies are working hard to break this cycle, moving towards renewable consumption. In this interview series, we are talking to business leaders who are sharing the steps they are taking toward renewable consumption. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Omar Asali.

Omar Asali is the founder of One Madison Corp., a special purpose acquisition company. When One Madison Corp. acquired Ranpak in 2018, Omar was appointed as CEO. Under Asali’s leadership, Ranpak has driven innovation in sustainable packaging. Its product lineup includes paper-based packaging alternatives for myriad use-cases that reduce wasted time, material, and space through the use of sustainable sourcing and advanced automation.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?

I grew up in Jordan and lost my dad at the age of 9, which had a huge impact on me. Growing up in the Middle East without a father was honestly very challenging and it really propelled this existential need in me to secure my future. That’s why I chose to come to the US for my undergraduate degree: because I was eager to put myself on a path to do better where the opportunity was the greatest. Since then, I’ve spent my entire professional life here in the US.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I would not be who I am today without my mother. I mentioned that we lost my dad at age 9, so from that point on my mother played the role of mother, father, breadwinner, role model — she did everything. What my mom did was nearly impossible. But she did it with immense love and gravitas. And she did it in a male-centric society. It really showed me how powerful women can be and how one can accomplish what may be deemed impossible by others through dignified resilience.

What is the mission of your company? What problems are you aiming to solve? What is your “why”?

At Ranpak, our mission is to Deliver a Better World®. We’re achieving that mission by developing sustainable alternatives to replace plastic packaging and developing automation solutions that can create more efficient packaging with those sustainable materials. In other words, we’re improving supply chain performance and costs, while improving the environmental impact for our customers.

Packaging is estimated to account for 50% of all plastic waste generated and when you consider that we’re currently leaking approximately 20 million metric tons of plastic waste each year into our lakes, rivers, and seas, which adds up to an enormous amount. It’s also a solvable amount.

Paper packaging materials enjoy high recycling rates globally, with an established track record of circularity in which we recycle materials as long as possible. Now more than ever, it is paramount for companies to utilize paper packaging to unlock new levels of sustainability, efficiency, and productivity. I truly believe that what’s good for the planet is also good for the bottom line.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?

Several years ago, when I was starting One Madison, I was having a conversation with my daughter who was probably 18 at the time and she said something that I will never forget. She said, “Do something that you think will help society and make the world better.” I’ve been trying to follow that advice in every investment I’ve made since then. The whole notion that we can find alignment in doing well in business and doing good for the planet is engrained in every decision I make.

Do you have a favorite life lesson quote? Can you tell us how that was relevant to you in your own life?

I can’t say that I have one favorite quote, but there is one by Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises that sticks with me, and I think is very relevant to life: “Gradually and then suddenly.” In the novel, he utilizes the quotation in a negative connotation to describe how he became unexpectedly bankrupt. I do think, however, it has a much broader relevance. It’s the notion that consistent small steps can lead to bigger things, which is something I strongly believe in. My approach to investments has always been patient capital which is grounded in playing the long game and prioritizing sustainable growth and incremental improvements.

Let’s now shift to the main part of our interview. Can you tell our readers about the initiatives that you or your company are taking to help break the cycle of non-renewable consumption? What specific problems related to non-renewable consumption are you aiming to solve?”

Twenty years ago, when someone opened a delivered package, they often focused strictly on the item(s) being delivered inside. Whether they received clothes, electronics, food, or something else entirely, they rarely considered the packaging surrounding the item, the amount of wasted space in that box, or how the items were padded or secured into the box. But that’s finally beginning to shift and in a big way. More and more consumers are beginning to pay attention to the amount of waste surrounding packaging and even large players like Amazon are making permanent shifts to paper as the preferred plastic alternative. The plastic crisis has become very real, and we see replacing plastic packaging as one of the most accessible steps a business can take to curb plastic usage.

For over 50 years, Ranpak has been committed to thinking outside the box about what goes on inside the box. Ranpak has developed a full spectrum of in-the-box, paper-based packaging solutions and automation systems that make more sustainable options easy to integrate. Our work is part of a growing trend of companies both responding to and preempting the growing economic, regulatory, and social pressures that are pushing sustainable packaging into the status quo — and as leaders in the space, we’re making it easier for our customers to join that trend, offering unrivaled ROI by solving for waste and inefficiency.

Can you give a few examples of what you are implementing to help address those issues?

Single-use plastic packaging can be confusing for end-customers to recycle, often requiring specialized facilities to reclaim, and even when recycled, will usually only provide value through one to two cycles at most. Paper is a renewable resource that will biodegrade in a natural environment. It is also widely recycled on a global scale and retains strength through up to seven cycles of reuse. By offering a full line of paper-based solutions, we’re making it easy for companies to make the sustainable choice, by making the economical choice.

We’re constantly looking for ways to eliminate wasted time, material, and space, to save our customers money and to help them improve their environmental impact: From warehouse-situated height reduction technologies, which reduce a significant amount void in boxes, to new cold chain offerings that reduce the amount of single-use plastics involved in keeping temperature-sensitive products cold, we’re creating packaging with materials that can easily be recycled by end users, without any specific treatment or processing facilities.

One challenge for our industry has been finding the right cold chain solution that is also sustainable — that’s why we launched climaliner plus™ cold chain liners. When used in combination with our Recycold® cool packs, which are filled with a drain-safe biodegradable gel, they can keep items cool for up to 72 hours during transit.

Our new naturemailer™ is also a 100% paper-based alternative to traditional plastic padded mailers and instead, is filled with layers of Geami®-like padding to ensure items are protected.

On the operations side of the spectrum, our Precube’it!™ cartonization software can be used with automation solutions like our flagship Cut’it!™ EVO automated height-reduction machine to reduce wasted space, wasted materials, and wasted time.

How do you measure the impact of your company’s sustainability initiatives, both in terms of environmental benefits and business growth? Can you share any key metrics or success stories?

We regularly conduct lifecycle analyses that assess the sustainability profile of our products, essentially comparing them to their legacy plastic and petrochemical based counterparts. When you look at the cradle-to-grave sustainability metrics, paper almost always outperforms plastics. To highlight but one example, when comparing our FillPak Trident™ void fill solution to traditional plastic filling, studies show that the FillPak Trident produces 14% less GHG emissions, used 22% less water, and has 74% more recycling potential compared to plastic filling. That information came from one of our lifecycle assessments that was peer-reviewed, meaning a third-party also validated the accuracy of the information.

As a business, we also issue an annual Sustainability and Impact Report which outlines progress against our own sustainability goals, as well as our latest innovations. For example, we recently achieved our goal of sourcing an aggregate paper supply consisting of at least 25% post-consumer waste (PCW) or alternative pulp by 2030. As of 2023, 57% of our paper supply was composed of PCW material. Another one of our goals is to ensure that 100% of our paper packaging materials comes from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC®)-certified sources by 2030 and we are currently sitting at 86%.

What challenges have you faced while implementing sustainable practices in your company, and how did you overcome them? Can you share a specific example?

As a company that lives and breathes sustainable solutions for our clients, one of our biggest challenges is ensuring we’re walking the walk internally, as well. From a client’s supply chain to our own logistics, we are doing all that we can to ensure our operations are living up to the objectives we’re assuming from our clients. Readers can look at our ESG report to learn more about what we’re doing specifically to reduce emissions across our operations, from our initiation of a program to replace our North American vehicle fleet with hybrid vehicles, or the opening of our certified BREEAM “very-good” facility in The Netherlands, but I’m happy to share that in 2023, of the approximately 4,786 metric tons of waste we produced across our global operation, 96%, or 4,581 metric tons, were recycled.

How would you articulate how a business can become more profitable by being more sustainable and more environmentally conscious? Can you share a story or example?

Today, in an inflationary environment, every C-suite is focused on lowering costs and controlling spending. Less energy, less material, less freight, and more substitutions with eco-friendly materials can all contribute to the bottom line and our planet.

Switching from legacy plastic packaging to paper at a cost neutral or cost beneficial manner is an example of a move that can help profitability by being more sustainable. Imagine this: driving towards price parity or savings against plastics while offering a superior customer experience with recycled packaging materials; why would business decision makers and change leaders not make that switch? Other than material substitution, one can also drive lower costs through automated solutions, software innovation, and data analysis. In part aided by industrial AI applications, these tools lead to less waste, higher efficiency, less freight dimensional and volumetric attributes, and less downstream energy impact.

Delivering an economic case for sustainability can be a major accelerant. Aligning a compelling business case with powerful environmental objectives is where magic can happen.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started promoting sustainability and climate justice” and why?

1. Change is hard. Change is one of those things that’s easy to talk about, but really difficult to do. People are creatures of habit, and we all love to do things we’ve done before. But when you’re trying to be a catalyst for change, it often feels like an uphill battle.
2. There are no set rules or standards to follow. In this industry, there are no specific systems of truth or rules to follow to demonstrate success. This is stuff that you must figure out along the way and be truly honest with yourself about how you measure impact. Everyone is going to say that they’re doing the right things and helping the environment and they’re going to pull data that suits their story. It makes it very hard to get to the truth when everyone’s story is touting something different.
3. Economic reality and sustainability. At the end of the day, there is an economic reality to sustainability and that’s that you have to find solutions that are either cost neutral or (hopefully) cost beneficial. That’s where the magic happens. If I tell you that you’ll be helping the planet, but you’re going to be paying more for it, that’s a hard solution to sell.
4. Importance of culture. The culture of your organization is one of your greatest assets, but it’s also one of the toughest things to change. If you think about how a family owned, private equity company thinks about achieving results versus a company that’s focused on long-term goals and aspirations, those are two entirely different cultures. And trying to shift culture takes consistent action each and every day in every interaction and conversation.
5. The power of incrementalism. Small steps matter. In particular, small steps in the right direction. Not everything needs to be transformational. Achieving a lot of little things right along the way can lead to big things over time.

You are a person of great influence and doing some great things for the world! If you could inspire a movement that would bring the greatest amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I think I would want to start a global movement to pay more respect to workers of all levels. The world has come to honor certain types of laborers — white collar, C-suite, celebrity, star athletes etc. — but I think it could be a really powerful thing to redefine what a celebration of workers really looks like. We tend to honor the work, but do we actually honor the worker? Across the globe, we celebrate things like Labor Day and Workers Day, but very few of us think about the meaning behind it. I’ve been very fortunate and have traveled to more than 60 countries for both leisure and business, and the first conclusion I have is how similar we all are. More often than not, people just want the same thing: to provide for their families and to be respected. I think society would benefit and we would reach the greatest amount of people if we showed more empathy, gratitude, and respect for general workers. Work is dignity. Next time, appreciate your waiter, bus driver, waste collector, delivery person, gas station attendant, etc. Show them more attention and make them feel that we actually honor them and their meaningful contributions to our society.

What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?

The best place to keep up with me is on LinkedIn, (LinkedIn Profile). To get updates on all of the cutting-edge work we do, follow Ranpak on LinkedIn (LinkedIn Profile), and check out our website: Ranpak — Eco Friendly Paper Packing Materials, Solutions & Equipment

This was so inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!

About the Interviewer: Monica Sanders JD, LL.M, is the founder of “The Undivide Project”, an organization dedicated to creating climate resilience in underserved communities using good tech and the power of the Internet. She holds faculty roles at the Georgetown University Law Center and the Tulane University Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy. Professor Sanders also serves on several UN agency working groups. As an attorney, Monica has held senior roles in all three branches of government, private industry, and nonprofits. In her previous life, she was a journalist for seven years and the recipient of several awards, including an Emmy. Now the New Orleans native spends her time in solidarity with and championing change for those on the frontlines of climate change and digital divestment. Learn more about how to join her at: www.theundivideproject.org