State of Sustainability Podcast

Guest: Katherine David, CEO, WRAP

SAIF: Welcome back to the State of Sustainability. I'm your host Saif Hamid, founder and CEO of Altruistiq.

This episode is a food sustainability vibe check. Many of you want to know what's happening in this space outside your own business — which topics are hot, which are cold, what the food sustainability mood looks like in Europe versus North America. To get the juiciest industry insights, I wanted a guest who's right at the centre of it all — someone who speaks with food sustainability leaders every day. I'm excited to have Katherine David with us. Katherine is the CEO of WRAP, a year into the role, making waves fast, and someone who has one of the traits I admire most: radical candour. Katherine, welcome to the show.

KATHERINE: I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

SAIF: It's been a while in the making, so great that we finally made it happen. You sit, from my perspective, at the heart of the food sustainability ecosystem in the UK, and WRAP's brand and reputation is clearly growing across Europe and pockets of North America too. I'd love to talk through how you found the role, what you're seeing and hearing in the market. For our listeners outside the UK, how would you introduce WRAP to an American audience?

KATHERINE: When I'm speaking to businesses and stakeholders in the States about what WRAP does, I always start with the fact that we're a circular economy not-for-profit. We're a British export — we've been working in the UK for 25 years and have a strong track record working with businesses and governments across the UK and Europe on our key programmes. We're now increasingly in the US as well, with a team and office in Washington DC.

One of the things that really distinguishes WRAP is that we say we're on the side of the doers. We love a blueprint and a roadmap as much as anyone, but we're very quick at translating system thinking into practical, outcome-driven programmes. We get alongside business sustainability teams, governments, and circular economy policy departments to design policies, systems, and guidance that actually change practices.

In the US right now, there's a real appetite for that kind of practical action — particularly where it can solve multi-dimensional challenges across environmental, social, and commercial outcomes simultaneously. I'm finding a lot of interest in our track record of achieving those things and how it might transfer into the US context.

SAIF: I first came across WRAP about four years ago through the Courtauld Commitment on packaging — the commitments and guidelines helping companies get their packaging in shape. I see WRAP as having this unique role at the intersection of government, industry, and the not-for-profit space — almost an intermediary between those different sets of stakeholders, which is genuinely valuable.

I'd love to go deeper on your own experience in the CEO role. You're just rounding out your first year — what do you love about it, and what do you hate? Let's make this personal.

KATHERINE: Let me rewind slightly. I joined WRAP — I can date it exactly because my youngest daughter Ruby just turned five. I did my final interview for my first role at WRAP, as Director of Behaviour Change and Business Programmes, when I was 41 weeks pregnant, past my due date, on a Zoom call during COVID.

I remember in that conversation explaining to the then-CEO Marcus why I was so excited to join despite being nine months pregnant. It was because WRAP plays exactly the role you describe — at the intersection of what we call people, partners, and policy. Bringing together tech innovators, businesses, NGOs, and policymakers, then connecting all of them with people as citizens, shoppers, recyclers, and influencers. I loved that WRAP does this system change in an evidence-driven, highly collaborative way — and that it moves whole markets. That's what drew me from a very happy time at Fairtrade, which is also a fascinating impact model in the food system.

Then last June I was fortunate enough to step up to CEO. A couple of things I love about it: the opportunity to engage with colleagues across the landscape at CEO level — it's a really exciting part of the job. And I've also learned over my career how important it is not to rush to be the person in the room with the strong recommendation or the right answer. I learned to hang back, enable others, build peer relationships. The difference as CEO is that ultimately you are the person everyone is looking to for the final strategic call. Having heard all the views, you're the one who makes the decision. I genuinely love that.

What I find hardest is the flip side: making judgement calls as a CEO also means deciding what not to do, often in the face of very passionate stakeholders and colleagues. That's difficult at the best of times, and particularly difficult right now as I step into my first CEO role in a constrained funding environment for charities — one that's requiring us to focus sharply on our core strengths. Being the person driving that focus is challenging when you're someone who loves new ideas and wants to encourage creativity and growth.

SAIF: So much of that resonates. I've learned in my own role that I've often been too readily swayed by the most recent, loudest, most confident voice in the room — and it's been a real learning to say, "What is actually my perspective? Where do I test what I'm hearing against my own view, and where do I hold firm?" I imagine you face this constantly, because so much of what you do is convening — bringing people around the table — and in the sustainability and circularity space, the power of narrative and communication gets you very far. You must be navigating competing combinations of ideology, charisma, and stubbornness on a daily basis.

KATHERINE: That's such a great observation. Have you ever done Myers-Briggs?

SAIF: I have. What are you?

KATHERINE: I'm EN —

SAIF: Wait, let me guess. I think you're a T.

KATHERINE: Mmm.

SAIF: And I'd say a J.

KATHERINE: So the really interesting one for me is the T-F dimension. I've done the assessment three times — F twice, T once. I'm very close to the middle. When I did the level-two analysis, which is all about how we actually make decisions, it clicked for me. I believe decisions should be made with evidence, analysis, and data — but the way I actually make decisions is by listening to key voices, trusted people in my circle, and perspectives from outside. That can create internal conflict.

What I've really learned is to embrace this as a strength rather than a weakness. It's important to listen not just to trusted voices, but to actively check your bias by seeking out a range of perspectives — including from people with different communication styles or different levels of seniority. I sometimes play a mental game where I imagine: what if these exact words were coming from a different person? How would I hear and absorb them differently?

WRAP is also a very science-led, evidence-led organisation, and I'm lucky to have colleagues who are skilled at helping me understand not just what the data says but what an analysis isn't saying — because information always gets curated, consciously or unconsciously, to make a certain argument. Being surrounded by colleagues whose bias is towards rigour, and then synthesising that with judgement and experience — that's the beauty of the convened landscape we work in.

SAIF: You mentioned things you hate about the job — what tops that list?

KATHERINE: I'm a parent of two still-young children — a recently turned five-year-old and a soon-to-be eight-year-old. On one hand, they're incredibly proud of me, even if their understanding is sometimes limited. My daughter recently asked: "If you earn more money, does that solve climate change?" I really wish that were true.

On the other hand, I really notice how many evenings I miss with them. Tonight, for example, I'm going to a big food industry dinner — important for the work, but another bedtime I'll miss. And I notice how easy it is to get absorbed in work and not be fully present during family time. I think that's probably the hardest part of the job. Though at least in a mission-driven role, the trade-off feels worthwhile. I think I'd struggle more if I were in a purely commercial job.

SAIF: You could be a banker.

KATHERINE: I'd be a terrible banker. Yes. Exactly.

SAIF: I want to move to the broader sustainability environment. Are there topics you see as genuinely hot and moving fast right now — and conversely, topics that have gone cold?

KATHERINE: Resilience is unquestionably the hot topic. Business resilience from a supply chain perspective, business resilience as a risk management issue, and household and community resilience when we're speaking with governments. It translates to cost-of-living concerns on one side and cost-saving and efficiency on the other.

What's not so hot: I think we're well past CSR-style initiatives. That's driven partly by the demand for demonstrable ROI on sustainability spend, and partly by the tightening of green claims legislation across different jurisdictions. I don't think that's a bad thing — we now have ample evidence across all threads of sustainability about what works. I honestly don't think many more pilots are needed. We should be in the business of scaling proven interventions. But that shift does make it harder than ever to secure investment into sustainability projects.

SAIF: Do you notice meaningful differences across the UK, Europe, and North America in terms of where attention and focus sit?

KATHERINE: There are definitely differences, though the headlines are broadly the same. The emphasis placed on the growth agenda — how do we drive more growth — versus the cost agenda — how do we make things more affordable — differs by geography and by political moment. But it's usually those two tunes being played.

One interesting lens is our work on food waste, which is having a real moment right now. We've been working on this for decades. What's really interesting in the US is that although the environmental benefits are enormous — a third of all food grown is wasted, and if you calculated the greenhouse gas emissions from that waste, food waste would be the third-largest emitter after the US and China — that environmental argument is not what's resonating in America. What's resonating is the household benefit, the social benefit, and a deep moral sense that wasting food is simply wrong. In the EU, the same conversation is much more driven by the environmental case. Same programme, different traction for different reasons — but it's having a moment everywhere.

SAIF: Where do you think we sit on the green hushing versus greenwashing spectrum in the food industry?

KATHERINE: Right now, I think we're leaning more towards green hushing. Though there are some businesses that are still rightly and proudly communicating their strategies.

A really nice example: I was at a dinner last night that Sodexo organised for their Cook for Change programme — a global cooking competition where sustainability criteria, including sustainable diets and food waste reduction, are built into the judging. It's a wonderful storytelling platform. And it's backed up by substance — Sodexo is on track to hit a 50% reduction in food waste by 2030, which is no small feat. They've deployed technology, processes, and training at scale and changed their policies to get there.

So on one hand you see businesses who've built a genuinely integrated, bold strategy and are rightly communicating it. And on the other hand, you see businesses who've talked big but acted small — those tend to be getting a little quieter.

SAIF: I want to explore two topics you didn't mention as hot or cold, but which come up regularly in my conversations. The first is EPR. I spoke with Michael Kobori, former Chief Sustainability Officer at Starbucks, earlier this year, and he flagged EPR as the big thing on his radar — and the more I raise it with food sustainability people, the more it seems to be deeply significant but rarely discussed outside the specialist community. The second is nutrient density and nutrition — every time I speak with Henry Dimbleby, this is high on his agenda. I can see it becoming as significant as resilience within a few years. Where do these sit on your priority stack?

KATHERINE: Both are things we think about a great deal.

On EPR — or extended producer responsibility — the underlying principle is "polluter pays": whoever puts a material onto the market pays for the end-of-life management of that material. The UK has just introduced packaging EPR, which is making a significant difference here, and we're very closely involved in that. There are packaging EPR schemes across many other markets too.

What's also interesting at a principle level is that EPR is extensible. You can imagine textiles EPR schemes, or even food EPR — what would it look like if businesses that sell food had to pay for the disposal of food waste? That would fundamentally change how they design products.

For now, staying in the present: the UK Plastics Pact has been one vehicle for driving progress, and we're now launching the UK Packaging Pact, which extends our focus from plastics to all packaging materials and works closely with the bodies overseeing the EPR system to translate it into actual system improvements.

It doesn't surprise me that your Starbucks contact highlighted EPR, because businesses right now are landing seven-figure EPR bills. Naturally, they want to understand how that money will be spent, how the overall system performance will improve, and how they'll be rewarded for making more sustainable packaging choices. It's a significant policy lever that can drive genuine system transformation if the right things happen off the back of it.

On nutrient density: last year we produced a net zero transition plan for the UK food and drink sector, and as we did the follow-up engagement, one of the clearest gaps that emerged was the nutrition dimension. Measuring the carbon footprint of food is only one relevant metric — we need to be thinking about nutrient density too. Henry is absolutely brilliant on this. I'd also highlight Chris Whitty — if you haven't heard him speak on it, his argument is compelling. His diagnosis is that we must not let the rise of GLP-1 drugs distract us from the real challenge: childhood obesity and its close correlation with areas of high deprivation. A national nutrition strategy should focus there first. GLP-1s are a cure for something that's already gone well past the point of prevention.

SAIF: Sticking with EPR for a moment — it strikes me as more effective than many other sustainability-linked legislative movements. I have a theory about why: partly because it's federated — in the US, state-by-state adoption means many more points of action, no single chokepoint. And partly because it's sidestepped the ideological alignment with ESG that has plagued climate-related legislation. It's framed as a waste management and municipal cleanliness issue. If you ask an average person in Portland whether it makes sense for a big consumer brand to pay for the waste created by their products, most people would say yes without hesitation. Do you think that's why EPR has been moving through relatively uncontested?

KATHERINE: Those are great observations, and they hold up when you compare EPR's progress to the glacial pace of the global plastic pollution treaty. EPR has moved much faster, for exactly the reasons you identify.

It also has the benefit of being both circularity policy and a form of taxation — and when you ask consumers who should pay for this problem, they point at the businesses, not the taxpayer.

There's also maybe an interesting parallel with flooding: when flooding happens near you — like when litter happens near you — you want someone to take action. You might not call either of those a climate policy, even though the outcomes are climate-related. And I think there's a clue for all of us there in how we communicate other sustainability topics. How do we stop calling things "circular economy" or "sustainability" and instead call them better products, better services, better things for your life and your community?

SAIF: How do you think about the adverse incentives that EPR can create? There's long been a tension between single-use plastic and emissions reduction — in many applications, single-use plastic actually has a lower carbon footprint than alternatives. EPR regimes can sometimes shift behaviour towards substrates that perform worse on climate even while performing better on circularity. How do you navigate that, given that WRAP's roots are in circularity rather than climate?

KATHERINE: We talk a lot about "best current truth" — being genuinely led by the science, and being honest when the science changes or surprises us.

What you're pointing to is what's called eco-modulation in EPR scheme design: packaging materials receive different cost signals based on their environmental performance. The critical thing is that "better for the environment" is multi-dimensional, and the scheme design needs to reflect that — including whether a material can actually be recycled in practice, not just whether it's technically recyclable.

A good example of where our own assumptions were overturned: a few years ago we were working on the use of single-use plastic film to wrap fresh produce — fruit and veg. Our hypothesis was that the packaging was serving a critical function in preventing food waste, and that since food waste has such a high environmental footprint, the plastic was worth it on balance. But we realised we didn't actually have the research to back that up. So we did the research.

What we found was the opposite of our hypothesis. When you remove the plastic packaging from certain key fresh produce items, overall food waste actually goes down. Two reasons. First, without the multipack format, people buy what they'll actually consume — instead of a bag of six apples, a single-person household buys two apples and eats both. Second, without the packaging, there's no date label. Without a date label, people use their senses — they look at the apple, smell it — rather than following a printed date. Date labels are a major driver of food waste. Remove the packaging, remove the date label, reduce waste.

So we changed our guidance. We worked with industry to start removing that form of single-use packaging. I use that story as an illustration of why we have to be specific about the applications of different packaging types in different contexts, and genuinely follow the science wherever it leads — including when it contradicts what we've previously said.

SAIF: It also shows how much the user experience matters — when you buy a garlic bulb and you're forced to buy a two-pack, that second bulb almost certainly gets wasted. It really brings it to life.

Katherine, thinking about your interactions with sustainability leaders across the industry — what does the most effective sustainability leader do well?

KATHERINE: I'm really lucky in my role because I get to meet so many of these people from around the world.

Two people come to mind from conversations just yesterday. The first is Emma Keller, who heads up sustainability for Nestlé in UK and Ireland. What I really admire about Emma is that she makes very targeted, focused interventions at a system level. For example, Nestlé have been active on the Net Zero Council in the UK — the government-convened body helping different industries create their net zero transition plans. Emma has been convening and facilitating that process while simultaneously driving specific, commercially relevant initiatives within Nestlé's own business, particularly in regenerative agriculture where they can make a genuine difference.

The second is Nick Brown, Sustainability Director at Premier Foods. Every conversation with Nick has a systems lens. He constantly joins the dots — if we're talking about net zero, he'll resurface the nature agenda; he'll connect it to the commercial agenda. And at the same time, he's working directly with brand teams within Premier to activate on food waste and make things happen at a practical level.

What they share is the ability to lift their gaze to the broader system and make targeted interventions that advance the collective effort, while simultaneously looking inward to lead their own teams through specific, relevant changes that are consistent with their brand's identity and direction.

SAIF: We've seen that firsthand with Nick and Premier. And with Emma, I remember one example that brought it to life beautifully — her team buried clothes under different types of soil on farms to demonstrate the health of the soil. You could actually watch the material degrade at different rates and see the difference that regenerative practices make right in front of you. Great storytelling.

KATHERINE: They're both really fun people too. In a space that can be quite hard and quite technical, a bit of storytelling and a bit of levity goes a very long way.

SAIF: Katherine, to close — what do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started the CEO role?

KATHERINE: I wish I'd had a crystal ball about how volatile the world was going to become. One of the hardest things has been the pace of change. Many of the assumptions we made in our strategy planning last summer — fresh into the CEO role — probably overstated the economic upside and underestimated the risk and volatility that were coming. The world has changed remarkably fast, and I've had to adjust quickly.

If I could go back to myself a year ago, the message would be: it's going to be a volatile world — be ready to move fast.

SAIF: Do you think you're naturally a wartime CEO or a peacetime CEO?

KATHERINE: My background is in account management, and I've always thought in terms of hunters and farmers — some people are great at winning new ground, others at stewarding and growing existing relationships. My preference has always been farmer over hunter. But I'm sharpening my skills — or perhaps it's less hunting and more sheep-herding, which is probably a better metaphor for how WRAP operates. What I know is there's a real need right now for leaders to go out, be propositional, lead from the front, and make things happen at pace. And I'm absolutely up for that challenge.

SAIF: I couldn't agree more. I also think the sustainability space is actually more interesting and more exciting when it's in the position it's in right now — because it means there's real value to be created on all sides. And the headline "WRAP CEO sharpens hunting knives" is a keeper.

KATHERINE: That is not in my briefing notes.

SAIF: Katherine, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a real pleasure.

KATHERINE: Thank you for having me. It's been an absolute joy.

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