BPF Packaging Online Seminar - Speakers Biographies

James Donaldson, Sortology 

James Donaldson is a chartered chemical engineer and has spent 30 years recycling chemicals and plastics. He created the business that grew into Biffa Polymers and won a Queens award for Innovation with the rHDPE Milk Bottle plant. He has recycled or tried to recycle nearly every type of plastic item from recycling high print metalized PP films (still running 15 years on) to PP post-consumer carpet. He currently has a 2 tonne/hour advanced sorting facility, is consulting on a number of food grade plastic recycling facilities and has recently submitted an EFSA application covering PP and PP films.

Anna Kounina, Quantis

As a sustainability consultant working at Quantis since 2010, Anna Kounina has served in various roles: project manager, life cycle analyst, expert, researcher and trainer on LCA, plastic leakage, water footprint, carbon footprint and toxic impact modelling. Anna has worked on over 100 projects, with small to large size companies in agro-food, health care, chemical, building, packaging sectors, as well as with public organizations in Switzerland and European H2020 research projects in the field of plastics, toxic impact modelling, biorefinery, cement production, nanotechnologies and water treatment.  

​James Piper, Ecosurety

James Piper is CEO of Ecosurety, the market leading and B Corp certified compliance scheme investing in quality recycling. 
With more than 1,000 customers including Danone, the Co-operative Group, Innocent and Virgin Media, Ecosurety supports efficient and more transparent investment in UK recycling projects via infrastructure, innovation and consumer awareness campaigns. 

James is driven to bring about positive change in the compliance market through increased transparency and accountability. Since taking the position of CEO in 2016, he has worked to demonstrate that recycling compliance need not be perceived as a tax, but an opportunity for brands to align their producer responsibility obligations with their sustainability agenda.
In this way producers are now demanding more from their compliance spend and James and the Ecosurety team are leading the way through a collaborative approach across areas of education, innovation, collaboration and infrastructure in the UK recycling sector. 

Heavily involved in strategy, policy and company values, James is also passionate about fairness, equal opportunities and a healthy work-life balance across the business. He is a regular speaker at industry events and has been featured in Resource Magazine’s top 100 most influential people in the waste sector since 2016.

Barry Turner, British Plastics Federation

Barry has had a varied industrial career initially with the telecoms industry (BT), then Ford Motor company and Vickers .But for the majority of his career he has held senior appointments including  as a mainboard director of a UK public quoted packaging company and as a mainboard director of and part owner of venture capital backed packaging companies. 

Barry has also being chairman and CEO of trade bodies representing the packaging industry and just over a year ago he merged the membership of PAFA ( the Packaging and Films Association) with the packaging members of the BPF( British Plastics Federation) and became the director responsible for that group.

Barry lives in North Yorkshire. 

Chris Sangar, EY