Wes Carter of Atlantic Packaging On The Case For Optimism About The Next Ten & Twenty Years

Indigenous peoples all over the world throughout history have known and understood balance — we just have to REMEMBER who we are and what we are, and these communities hold the keys.

Reading the news can be so demoralizing: climate change, war, fires, epidemics, rogue AI, mental health, authoritarianism, extreme partisanship. But humans need hope. In order for us to create a positive future, we need to be able to have hope that there can be a positive future. What is the “Case for Optimism” over the next decades? What can we look forward to and hope for to help us strive for a more positive future?

In this series, we aim to explore and highlight the positive aspects, potential breakthroughs, and reasons for optimism that lie ahead in the coming decade and beyond. We are talking to authors, researchers, entrepreneurs, scientists, futurists, and other experts who can shed light on the exciting advancements, innovations, and opportunities that await us. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Wes Carter.

Wes Carter is President of Atlantic Packaging, the largest privately-owned industrial packaging company in North America. Acknowledging that his own industry has been a significant contributor to the waste crisis, Carter is on a mission to use his seat at the table to create lasting change. A recently appointed board member of The Conservation Alliance who’s also involved with the Ocean Plastics Leadership Network, Carter is passionate about the possibilities that exist if consumers, businesses, and politicians work together to create a better future.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive into the main focus of our interview, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory?

I grew up on the North Carolina coast splitting time between Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach. Saltwater was the backdrop of my youth and molded a lot of who I am today. Both my grandfather and father were, and are, avid outdoorsmen and introduced me to the joys of…