Marshall eyes circular economy as Nova's first director of sustainability

With the importance of a circular economy on the rise, Nova Chemicals Corp. has named Sarah Marshall as its first director of sustainability.

Marshall has been with Calgary, Alberta-based Nova, a major North American polyethylene resin maker, since 1997. In her new role, she's responsible for leading efforts to achieve Nova's vision for sustainability.

Marshall discussed her new role in an interview with Plastics News.

"There's been a lot of focus on plastics in the environment from the public and the media," she said. "Polyethylene brings a significant amount of value through lightweighting and by being cost-effective. That's the message we want to get across."

Nova has been involved in Responsible Care efforts in Canada since 1985. The firm earlier this year became a founding member of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, a group of almost 40 global firms that have pledged $1.5 billion to help solve the problem of plastic waste on a global scale.

"We're committed to the goal, but we have a long way to go," Marshall said.

In her new role at Nova, Marshall will oversee the firm's corporate investments in supporting collaboration and promoting ocean health. She'll also serve on industry association boards and committees.

Nova officials said that Marshall is well positioned for that role because of her former tenure as chair of the board of directors for the Canadian Plastics Industry Association (CPIA).

Nova supports the goals of the CPIA and the American Chemistry Council to make all plastics packaging recyclable or recoverable by 2030 and to have all plastics packaging reused, recycled or recovered by 2040, Marshall said.

Previously at Nova, Marshall led teams of scientists, engineers and technologists at the firm's Centre for Applied Research and Centre for Performance Applications. She has experience developing polyethylene products and applications to meet customers' evolving needs, as well as in scaling catalyst and process technology advances to deliver desired products.

Recently, Nova has developed a portfolio of recyclable film structure designs for packaging applications, including a recyclable stand-up pouch film structure that can be used in food packaging traditionally made with nonrecyclable, mixed-material structures.

"We can develop new materials and redesign packaging to make products more recyclable," Marshall said. "This is one way that we can help our customers meet their sustainability goals."

Recycling will be a key part of plastics sustainability, since Nova and other PE makers are adding billions of pounds of new production capacity even as they work to handle existing plastics waste.

To help meet this goal, Nova last year pledged $2 million to support Project Stop, a program that was co-created in 2017 by Nova's sister company Borealis and by SYSTEMIQ, a sustainable land use and energy firm. Nova's first effort with Project Stop has been the opening of a recycling center in Muncar, Indonesia. That location was chosen because of Indonesia's high rate of plastics leakage into the ocean.

The Muncar site "has made remarkable progress in how to handle waste," Marshall said.