Jeff Schuetz is the vice president of Sonoco’s consumer packaging technology and a key figure in the company’s ongoing efforts to identify and implement more sustainable packaging technology. Ahead of his scheduled talk at the Sustainability in Packaging conference (March 9-12), we spoke with Jeff about Sonoco’s work to address current challenges in that sphere, the company’s open innovation efforts, and the future of packaging.

Consumer backlash against plastic, government regulations, and an increasing sense of corporate citizenship has led the industry to step up its efforts to develop single-use products from paper and other alternative materials. Among plastic products, few are more prevalent than the bottle: the centuries-old container for beverages, perfumes, and messages from those lost at sea. Producing a paper bottle that is sustainable, recyclable and can compete with plastic on price is no easy feat. It will likely be years before we wake up to find beer bottles made of paper scattered across our front lawns.

While on a research trip to the Iraqi city of Basra in 1996, environmental engineer Souad Al-Azzawi encountered a mother taking care of three young children, all of them sick and unable to move on their own. With no idea why her children were ill, the mother hoped Al-Azzawi had come to help her family. Unfortunately, there was little Al-Azzawi—or anyone else—could do. As the director of the doctoral program in environmental engineering at the University of Baghdad, Al-Azzawi had been researching radioactive contamination in Basra for years.

Jeff Haverly gave two presentations this winter before members of his Indiana community, urging them to take action against climate change. “I start with a map of Florida and ask how many people holiday there. Then I show how Florida will look like in 2050,” the 67-year-old said. Florida’s coastal floodplain is expected to expand by 47% in the next 30 years due to sea-level rise, according to Climate Central, a science organization based in New Jersey. As vast stretches of land go underwater, homeowners might have to move to higher ground.

Asian Americans are increasingly pushing for environmental reforms to address the issues impacting their communities across the country. A new Chicago advocacy group recently held a workshop on Asian Americans and Environmental Justice to drive home the importance of the community’s political involvement for climate action. Andrea Chu has been organizing these workshops for the past year. Chu, whose parents immigrated from Taiwan, has studied environmental planning and management.

A recent study based on social media data shows that chat features of conversations between help-seekers and therapists can be used to predict suicide risk and develop models to reduce the risk. “There is an interesting link between language and health that hasn’t been explored in real-time fashion,” said Carlos Gallo, a research assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

Glaciers across the globe behave in a synchronized manner, said geologist Thomas Lowell at the recent Comer Climate Conference, an annual national conference held in southwestern Wisconsin. Not only does he study glaciers around the world to reach this conclusion but also compared data obtained by separate dating techniques. Sounding the alarm, he said as we warm temperatures, the glaciers retreat faster.

In his book, Sekhsarai is dedicated to the cause of retaining the endemic nature of the islands as well as its original inhabitants. On visiting Andaman this March end on a family vacation, we decided to take the Andaman Trunk Road (ATR) to reach the northern end of the island from Port Blair on the south-east. The ATR runs along the Jarowa Tribal Reserve, the area demarcated for the tribe, and it is the main point of contact between the tribal population and the locals who use the road for trade and tourism.

“The idea of a fit body is a social construct,” says Dolly Singh, a yoga enthusiast, media professional, and part-time chef. Singh forayed into the news with her difficult yoga moves which she executes with ease and agility though she is not the typical slim girl on a mat. She says with confidence, “I can do moves that even so-called fit-bodied girls struggle with“, and questions ideas of beauty, physical strength, and fitness, all at the same time.