“Plastic has its use cases. In the medical industry, it saves lives every day. But for takeaway uses, where it’s used for a short amount of time, that’s where it’s a real issue.” For today’s 40 Minute Mentor episode, we’re joined by Pierre Paslier, the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Notpla, a sustainable packaging startup. To this day, Notpla have partnered with the likes of Lucozade, to replace single use plastic cups and bottles at the London Marathon, and JustEat, to launch a  food container coated with seaweed - a revolutionary move for the takeaway industry. Following this huge progress in the industry, to help ease the damage made to the environment, the Notpla team have recently been awarded with Prince William’s prestigious, 1 million pound Earthshot prize. Today, Pierre shares tons of insights with us, including: ➡️ How he became a Founder, following years at L’Oreal [03:57] ➡️ The experiences at L’Oreal that led to the creation of Notpla [05:23] ➡️ Notpla’s mission and how their packaging works [07:33] ➡️ Seeing Notpla’s packaging being used at the Women’s Euros [11:16] ➡️ Winning the Earthshot Prize [13:16]➡️ Meeting Prince William at the Earthshot retreat [15:53] ➡️ More about our sponsors, Alchemist [18:11] ➡️ Dealing with increasing media attention and keeping an eye on your mission  [19:28] ➡️ Building the Notpla team [22:03] ➡️ Advice for moving into sustainability [28:28] ➡️ The part we can all play in reducing plastic packaging [31:03]  ⛳ Helpful links:➡️ More about Pierre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierrepaslier/  ➡️ Check out Notpla: https://www.notpla.com/ 💙 A big thank you to our Sponsors:Alchemist - an industry leading learning and development company, whose learning journeys and experiences help organisations who want to grow, change or transform by putting the learner first to optimise organisational performance.To learn more about Alchemist and see how they work with some of the most innovative companies in the world, head over to https://thisisalchemist.com/40minutementor/  to find out more.  🏆 Want to partner with us? Do you want to get your brand in front of leading Startup Founders, Investors and C-Suite decision-makers, and attract some of the sharpest talent in the Startup/Scaleup scene? Get in touch with our Head of Marketing and Producer, Hannah to find out more about how we can co-produce content that will help you stand out and engage with over 40,000 loyal monthly listeners. You can reach her on hannah@jbmc.co.uk 🤝 Explore Hidden Pages: For this year’s Black History Month, we’ve had the great pleasure of partnering with Samuel Tholley and Hidden Pages - a zine discovering hidden Melanated history & lists of sources exploring the Melanated/"Black" experience. We talked about his motivation behind Hidden Pages, why it's so important to normalise black history and he shares some amazing historic figures we can all learn from.This is only the beginning of this partnership, so make sure you check out our initial conversation with Samuel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF_-blY_kUQ ⭐Enjoyed this episode?⭐️<