Desta Raines, Governing Board Secretary at ISSP and Board Member at Pact Collective, reveals how strong, enduring multisector partnerships in sustainability need to be carefully crafted and mutually beneficial. And sometimes they need to start slowly to be able to eventually move fast and at scale.

When I started my new job in the fall of 2020, one of the first assignments I was given was to figure out how to launch a consumer-facing empties take-back program across all our stores in North America. The program would allow consumers to dispose of their beauty product packaging at dedicated in-store stations to help divert it from landfills. It was a CEO priority that needed to happen. For me, the question was how? I met with the CEO and got his thoughts. His response: consumer surveys, pilot, get into the field to see what customers and store employees thought and wanted. Sounded great! But I needed a solid game plan to get this done.

I started mapping out the logistics, talking to people inside and outside of the company, trying to understand the organization culture, our market positioning, how things worked. I tried to wrap my head around the best way to approach this idea. I knew it was critically important to produce a failsafe plan. After all, this would be a highly visible program and one where I would need robust inside support to execute. As I often say when describing our company's sustainability initiatives — and it's an apt metaphor — I am the conductor, and the rest of the organization is the orchestra. There cannot be a concert unless we all play our instruments.

Attuning to start

As I started pulling together my plans and mapping my strategy, something still was not feeling right to me. I was thinking about the challenge and considering that while we could develop an initiative to ensure at least a certain degree of impact, what would be the most meaningful thing we could do?

As I was pondering, we were approached by the co-founder of Pact Collective, which proposed an idea that I was seeking deep down.  Essentially: become the first prestige beauty retailer to join Pact Collective and lead the way in eliminating packaging waste from the beauty and wellness industries. I was elated with this possibility. It felt like winning the lottery. Though I knew I still needed to dig deeper — engage the organization and, most importantly, make sure the CEO was onboard.

Once I confirmed that our leadership and our talent were enthusiastic toward this potential collaboration, I had to make sure Pact Collective was a partner we could rely upon fully. I knew that once we started down the path, we would not have the option to turn back.

Finding the right harmony

When a corporation is seeking nonprofit partners to execute sustainability programs, it is important to have a clear vision of what you want to create and to ensure mission alignment across the partnering organizations. Roles and expectations need to be clearly defined, which involves considerable discussion. Over the course of my career, I have seen successful corporate - NGO partnerships and many that have failed. Reasons for failure can range from insufficient capacity at the NGO to support at-scale deployment, to inadequate prioritization and budget within the corporation's strategic planning. From the standpoint of the NGO specifically, they need long-term partners to scale impact — and not to be used as shields against corporate reputational risk.

How the concert progressed

In the case of Pact Collective, we had many conversations, knowing that an eventual partnership with them would exponentially multiply their drop-off bin locations. We did a lot of scenario planning before we even circled back to our CEO. With time, I was confident that we had worked out the mechanics of a mutually beneficial relationship that had the potential to be industry changing. Our CEO agreed.

Focusing on a sector-wide issue, such as packaging waste in the beauty and wellness industries — and engaging consumers to be able to scale our initiative — made a lot of sense for us. The idea of being part of a group of companies, including brands we retailed, and working together to solve a common issue made it even more appealing. We hoped that by putting this stake in the ground we could serve as a catalyst for positive change across our industry.

Personally, I loved that Pact Collective focused on consumer action to bring back clean, empty packaging that otherwise would not be accepted by community recycling programs. Scaling this initiative involved effective communication across our consumer audiences, educating them on how to do it and why it mattered.  And it involved providing bins across all our retail locations and training our employees to facilitate both consumer engagement and the recycling process.

The music continues

The success of our partnership with Pact Collective has created momentum for other sustainability initiatives at our company. Not only did our empties take-back initiative generate executive-level visibility, but it also drew attention across the whole organization. Working across multiple teams on an ongoing basis has built lasting relationships — relationships that have furthered subsequent sustainability initiatives. I see now that our empties take-back program has served as the trunk of a tree from which sustainability branches can more easily sprout and grow.

Reflecting on this approach, I realize that it just takes one successful sustainability win to start the show. While the music may not play as fast as you want it to, it can build tempo over time. As sustainability practitioners, we can feel a sense of urgency — the climate is changing fast, people! — yet often lack the time, resources, support, motivation, or momentum to move quickly. Realizing that we can move slowly to move fast is one of the best lessons I have learned.

Today the Pact Collective program has stood the test of time, and the partnership continues to thrive. More companies and brands have joined, and I have had the honor to serve on its Board of Directors. Creating a strong and lasting partnership builds the case for more and illustrates that these relationships work well when carefully crafted and mutually beneficial.