Atlantic Packaging President Wes Carter and the relaunch of this podcast!

https://www.atlanticpkg.com/

Summary

In this episode of Sustainable Packaging, host Cory Connors interviews Wes Carter, president of Atlantic Packaging, discussing the company's legacy, the impact of Horace Carter, and the evolution of sustainable practices in packaging. They explore the birth of A New Earth Project, emphasizing the importance of consumer demand for sustainability and the integration of health and wellness in the workplace. The conversation highlights the need for collective action in creating a more sustainable future.


Takeaways

Wes Carter emphasizes the importance of legacy in shaping Atlantic Packaging's mission.
Horace Carter's fight against the KKK serves as an inspiration for current environmental efforts.
The evolution of Atlantic Packaging reflects a commitment to sustainability and efficiency.
A New Earth Project was born from a desire to address plastic pollution at its source.
Consumer demand is a powerful driver for sustainable practices in packaging.
Health and wellness initiatives are integral to Atlantic Packaging's company culture.
Sustainable packaging can enhance brand image and consumer loyalty.
Collaboration is essential for achieving sustainability goals in the packaging industry.
The outdoor industry is seen as a leader in adopting sustainable practices.
Wes Carter believes that all organizations should serve the greater good. 


Titles

The Legacy of Horace Carter: A Fight for Justice
Sustainable Packaging: The Evolution of Atlantic Packaging


Sound bites

"We do this together."
"This is a legacy moment."
"We are in a legacy moment."


Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Sustainable Packaging and Atlantic Packaging
01:01 Wes Carter's Background and Family Legacy
03:08 The Story of Horace Carter and His Fight Against the KKK
08:54 The Connection Between Past and Present: Civil Rights to Environmental Rights
12:00 The Evolution of Atlantic Packaging
15:57 The New Earth Project: A Sustainable Initiative
22:04 The Impact of Consumer Demand on Sustainability
26:58 Health and Wellness in the Workplace
31:52 Conclusion and Call to Action

Keywords

Sustainable Packaging, Atlantic Packaging, Horace Carter, A New Earth Project, Environmental Rights, Health and Wellness, Consumer Demand, Legacy, Packaging Efficiency, Corporate Responsibility

https://www.linkedin.com/in/cory-connors/

I'm here to help you make your packaging more sustainable! Reach out today and I'll get back to you asap.

This podcast is an independent production and the podcast production is an original work of the author. All rights of ownership and reproduction are retained—copyright 2022.

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Sustainable Packaging Podcast with Cory Connors, presented by Atlantic Packaging. I'm your host, Cory Connors, and today I am thrilled to welcome Wes Carter to the show. Today is a big day. Wes is the president of Atlantic Packaging and the founder of a new project. He is also the guy who hired me here at Atlantic. And today's episode marks the relaunch of my podcast with all new graphics, new music, and with meaningful support from the entire team at Atlantic. Wes and I had a chance to talk about his background and the history of Atlantic packaging, including the amazing story about Horace Carter, his grandfather, and his run-ins with the KKK. We also get to talk about why sustainable packaging has become the focus of Atlantic and a new Earth project. Today's guest is Mr. Wes Carter, the president of Atlantic Packaging and my new boss. I'm so excited to have you on, sir. Thank you again for joining the show and for letting me be on your team. Thanks, Cory. It is awesome to be with you and we are equally honored to have you as a part of Atlantic and the New Earth Project. It really does feel like a match made in heaven. this is a big day, me and you on this podcast together. This has been a long time coming. I agree. I've been admiring you and your team for many years and today is it's huge for me. And we've got our new podcast logo put made by Megan Hatfield and the marketing team. Just really impressive work there. So excited to premiere that here with you and yeah, really looking forward to learning about Atlantic packaging and your background. want to start with you first before we go into all of that. lineage and the history. Can you tell us a little bit about you and your background? Sure. was born in Tabor City where the company was founded, where my grandfather started the Tabor City Tribune. That's where I was born initially. But when I was three years old, my parents relocated to Wilmington, North Carolina. And at that time, Atlantic was a paper and a printing company. And then my dad, Rusty, acquired a company called Crown Box, which was a small packaging company. in Wilmington, and this is probably in the late 70s, early 80s. And that took Atlantic from one location in Tabor City to two locations. And so I spent my youth and I grew up in Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach. the experience of growing up on the coast with the ocean and salt water is the backdrop to my childhood. certainly had a big impact on who I am today. And, you know, I'm happy to tell you the story of my grandfather. A lot of folks listening may have heard that story before, but the story of my grandfather and what he did in his early adult life, the reverberations of that, the soul and the energy of what he did is still, I believe, very present in Atlantic today and the work that we're doing. And it's deeply. personal and inspiring for me. And I think about my grandfather a lot in the work that we're doing today. Yeah. Well said. A lot of people don't realize that your grandfather Horace Carter was actually had a run in with the KKK. And I think we should tell that story today because I think it's really important to, it talks about, I think it speaks to where you are in your mindset and how you are continuing to fight on a different front. But I just, if you could tell us that story about him and how he used his platform to fight something that was so negative in our culture. Actually, I'm holding his pins right now. He left these pins to me, these that he used to write with. So I'll keep these close by. And actually I've got his business card in there as well. So you can see a publisher and founder of the Tabor City Tribune. But my grandfather um was born in a small town right outside of Charlotte, a little town called Indy in Stanley County. I went to a one room schoolhouse and was the first kid in the history of that school to ever go to college. he had a, a writing teacher that really believed in him and helped him get into the university of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. and he went to Chapel Hill with about $50 in his pocket. That was all the money he had to his name. And he went to the admissions office and said, Hey, my name is Horace Carter and I'm here to study, but I'm not sure I can afford to put myself through school. He used to laugh. said the admissions guy said, yeah, you can afford to get your way through school, but you're to have to work. we've seen people do it on less. So he got a job at the Daily Tar Heel, the university newspaper and fell in love with journalism. And he worked, he worked all four years at the Daily Tar Heel that he was in school. And by the time he graduated, he was the editor of the Daily Tar Heel. And for a small town kid, being the editor of a major university newspaper was an inspiration for him. It was enlightening for him. mean, he ended up being engaged with a lot of liberal thinkers of the day and a gentleman named Frank Porter Graham became a big mentor of his who was really influential politically in those days. so when my grandfather graduated from North Carolina, His dream was to start his own newspaper and he answered a classifieds ad for Columbus County, North Carolina, for a little town called Taper City that wanted a weekly newspaper. So he, he went to Taper City and he started this weekly newspaper. And, initially he was just reporting on tobacco farming news and local agriculture news. And, and really it was just a newspaper to support his family. You know, like it was, it was just a job initially. um But my grandfather became aware that the Ku Klux Klan was really active in that community and he was witnessing motorcades and cross burnings and people getting pulled out of their house and being beaten and just all the things you read about in the history books about the Klan. And my grandfather was this inspired power of the pin, God and country guy. And he just said, there's no place in the United States of America for vigilante justice. He began publishing articles and writing, scathing editorials, condemning their activity. That was a really dangerous thing to do. Cause if you know, the Klan was everywhere. I mean, they were police officers, they were restaurant owners. They went to your church, but you might not know who they are. know, so he got almost constant threats against his family. threatened, they hired a hit man at one point to kill him. They threatened to burn down his house. They threatened all of his advertisers. And the part of the story that has hit me harder as I've gotten older and have my own family is what his wife and kids went through, especially his wife, because he had three children, my father being the middle child, and my dad was only two or three years old at the time. But for three or four years, they went to bed every night wondering if tonight was the night that their whole family got murdered in their sleep. um To consider what that would even be like for a week, much less three years. But my grandfather was really committed to this mission and his wife supported him in a big way. And the two of them together really took on the Klan and he never relented. Eventually his editorials got picked up by larger newspapers and were reprinted in like the Charlotte Observer or the Raleigh News and Observer. Finally, the FBI contacted him and said, we need your help. We want to infiltrate the Klan, which is exactly what they did. They ended up arresting over 300 Klansmen, imprisoning over 50, including the grand dragon, Thomas Hamilton. And that really broke their back. mean, the Klan was never the same organization in the Southeast. And my grandfather subsequently won the Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service in 1952. First weekly newspaper to ever win a Pulitzer. And he was only 32 years old at the time. So that is the inception story of Atlantic. Again, we're a lot different than a weekly newspaper today, but the values, the moral compass, the recognition that a business or really any organization should ultimately, first and foremost, be in service to the greater good. that lesson, I continue to learn. I mean, that lesson, I've learned that lesson over and over and over again throughout my life. And I hope the work that we're doing today in some ways is a reflection of that because my grandfather fought for civil rights during the civil rights era. And I feel like we're the same organization fighting for environmental rights, the rights of all life to be able to exist in a healthy way. we're fighting for that, you know, in the age of massive environmental degradation. So nobody's trying to kill me, which is the biggest difference. So I'm not comparing the courage that he had to what we're doing today, but there is a synergy there that I think is worth noting. There certainly is, and that is an incredible story, Wes. And I'm so impressed by you and your family and the fight that they've had in their lives and you've had in your life. There are certainly many people who don't agree with us and they don't agree that focusing on the environment is an important thing and focusing on health is an important thing. we constantly get pushed back on these ideas and which seems ridiculous, but it's very true. yeah. uh doesn't seem ridiculous. It is ridiculous. I I Marvel at it. I mean like we know that abundance in life comes from health. That is super obvious. Now we can debate strategies and and what do we consider healthy? But the idea that all of us should be supporting health in all of its dimensions to me is you know, obvious beyond, you know, beyond debate. I agree. And that's why I think that's why I was so excited to work with you, because it makes sense to me and makes sense to us. But we need to show that effective, you know, how we can make that effective in the future. But in addition to your role as the president of Atlantic Packaging, like you needed another job, you are now a founder of a new Earth project. Can you can you tell us that and how how that is part of this great company? Sure. So just to kind of link the newspaper to the Atlantic of today, a lot of people wonder how a weekly newspaper became this large packaging company. After my grandfather won the Pulitzer, he got a lot of notoriety around the country and he traveled and did speeches at rotary clubs and business events and things like that. And in those days, if you were in the newspaper business, you were also in the paper and office supply business that kind of went hand in hand. And I actually remember that as a kid, we sold pens and pencils and staplers and stuff like that. So The second part of his career was really developing a business adjacent to the newspaper because the textile industry from New York and Pennsylvania, New Jersey was migrating to the Southeast and all these hosiery companies were setting up shop and they needed converted paperboard like collar strips from men's shirts and underwear and sock inserts that were all made from, know, die cut paperboard. And so we already had die cutters and printing presses for the newspaper. So my grandfather started selling you know, die cut paperboard and pretty soon those apparel companies were like, Hey, can you sell us corrugated boxes or tape or bags? And so this little packaging business grew up adjacent to the newspaper. But my grandfather used to always say, I never set out to be a business person. I'm a writer. And so when he was in his mid to late fifties, he was still a pretty young man. He threw the keys of Atlantic to my grandfather or to my father, Rusty, who's still our CEO today. And, and my grandfather moved to Florida, um, where Um, when I was growing up in the eighties and nineties, my grandfather was considered one of the most preeminent outdoor writers in Florida. he wrote thousands of articles for Florida sportsman and field and stream magazine. He, he also wrote probably over 25 books on freshwater fishing and the outdoors. I grew up with a grandfather who was a naturalist, who was a big conservationist. And, and, and that's what I, in the summers, I would visit him in Florida and we'd go bass fishing from dark to dark. And that's how was. As a 12 year old, was a lot. um But anyway, so my dad was not as interested in the newspaper, but we still print it to this very day for posterity, primarily. But my dad was the one that really scaled Atlantic and knew that we had to diversify outside of apparel and textiles. And so we began selling packaging to the food industry and He hired a gentleman named Bill Balkam, who's also still with us to this day. And he had Bill, along with a lot of other senior leaders throughout the eighties and nineties, really scaled Atlantic to a really strong regional packaging player. And then in the mid nineties, my dad made a decision that we didn't want to just be a commodities broker. And so he, he hired a few people to really develop a packaging equipment and automation program. We hired a bunch of technicians and initially it was like, we want to sell high-performance packaging materials, we need to sell the equipment too. And automation was beginning to become a bigger and bigger deal. So was kind of a razor razor blade model. what happened over like the early 2000s, you know, when I joined the company, cause I joined in about 2000, not in about, I joined in 2001 after spending a couple of years living in Utah, working in the outdoor industry, interestingly enough, selling mountain bikes and telemark skis. And, but But what we started, we really started to focus on packaging efficiency and optimization. And so we cut our teeth at some big companies like Coca-Cola, like Shaw Industries, like Procter & Gamble, because we went from a razor razor blade model to really understanding how to create really efficient use of packaging through optimizing the equipment and the materials. And that really became our value proposition. and so that was the company that I was born into. Now it wasn't for sustainability reasons. Initially, it was about driving out waste. but we were able to show big savings to customers, above and beyond just transactional savings. And that value proposition that my dad and his leadership developed is what scaled Atlantic to be a national company because our customers started saying. golly, what you guys are doing for us in Charlotte and Atlanta, we need you to do for us in Dallas and Chicago and Los Angeles. And so, and I was a big part of that as well because when we really started to become a national company, you know, it was probably 15 years ago. I'd been working in the company for eight or 10 years. I knew the organization and, I got really excited about us being a national company. not just to be big, but because I felt like our value proposition was the most attractive to these larger brands. And so that's kind of what got us to where we are, at least in that segment of our business. think the other thing to articulate is we've always still had this manufacturing part of our business because we started off as a paperboard converter. And today still 30 % of our revenues are in products that we manufacture. As you've been to Tabor City and seen. you know, we do folded cartons, we do labels, we print film, we print paper, we laminate. We have the capacity to convert over 300,000 tons of paperboard annually, which is about as large as any company that I've found in the world. And so, so that's kind of like the baseline of where Wes Carter entered the industry and kind of began to scale. And so I can now tell you how that really translates to sustainability, unless you have any questions about that piece. an incredible process and I absolutely agree with you that automation and the equipment leads right into cost savings, which leads right into sustainability. And you're exactly right. It's just that you've figured out the pathway to a more sustainable future, but that leads us right into a new earth project and your, what was the impetus for it? Why, why did you want to start a secondary situation there? So I've always loved the outdoors. mean, the outdoors have been the backdrop of my life. As I mentioned, you know, I grew up, you know, on the Atlantic Ocean, but I also had a grandfather and a father who were big outdoorsmen, you know. So I grew up duck hunting and saltwater fishing and, and, and I've been a surfer my whole life. And that's one of my primary passions to this day. And I also love the mountains. I mean, I, you know, when I was in high school, my buddies and I were kind of diehard snowboarders and And then I got into skiing and snowboarding and, and, and I lived out West in Park City, Utah, when I got out of college. So the outdoor industry has always been really, really important to me. But again, I didn't see how those things intersected with my work life really ever, you know, that was really on my radar, but I was on a surfing trip eight or nine years ago in Southeast Asia and the plastic pollution was just everywhere. And I was in arguably like surfers paradise, uh you know, this beautiful islands you ever seen, no real people around other than some indigenous folks that have been there for a very long time. And they certainly weren't creating the plastic pollution, but it was everywhere. And I remember sitting on my surfboard going, you know what? This is all coming from the supply chain that we're a part of. And it's not all packaging that we sell, but like this problem is is an illness of the supply chain. And when I got back from that trip, I really started to do a lot of research. And I recognized that a lot of the pollution and the packaging was coming from the supply chain that we were a part of. was a lot of like, packaging companies and also customers and suppliers that I had deep relationships with. And... I started to consider what would it look like for Atlantic to really embrace sustainability and take on this plastic pollution crisis at its root? I felt like, cause I understood like the rate at which we're producing a lot of this non-sustainable packaging and how freely it's entering the marketplace, we're never gonna clean it up at the rate that we're creating it. Like it's just too much volume. We need to solve it at the root. So I became a very loud advocate for sustainability. And this is before a new earth project really happened. But for a few years there, I just started talking a lot about it. And I also realized that like, were really well set up to do this because our value proposition was fundamentally use less. So I was like, we've got the hardest part already done, you know, this packaging efficiency model. Let's just get more mindful of the, of the materials that we're selling, you know, and get really analytical about them too. And understand that like, the e-commerce business is different than the automotive business. And we're have to be, you know, oh analytical in how we determine materials and also end of life scenarios, depending on the vertical and sometimes maybe even depending on the customer. And so I presented that to our leadership and everyone, there was general agreement. We got really serious about our internal commitments to sustainability. We began working with the carbon disclosure project and working towards setting science-based targets. We started making big investments in solar to power a lot of our facilities and electrification of our vehicles. We started implementing a zero waste program. But what actually happened is because I was pretty outspoken in the industry, a friend of mine who was a branding and marketing guy said, Wes, you're a surfer. And I swear I've always thought that surfers more than anybody else should be advocates for ocean conservation. I've got a friend that I used to work with at Hurley, the surf brand back in the nineties, who's a filmmaker. And I'd like to connect you with him. Cause I just feel like there might be something there. So my friend Darren Doane, connected me with a guy named Peter King who lives on the North shore of Oahu. And Peter and I, was the day after Christmas, 2020. I'll never forget it. December the 26th, 2020, Peter and I, was in park city, actually snow skiing with my kids. And Peter was on the North shore and we had a three hour zoom call and Hatched up this idea that I'd come to Hawaii and we would create the first ever fully sustainable surfboard shipping system that was plastic free. And we were going to work with some of the major shapers in Hawaii and Peter had all those relationships and create a little documentary series about this as a way to show the world that like, if we can do this for surfboards, we can do it for anything. And it's just. We used to laugh, like we could have made a documentary series about sustainable packaging for industrial shelving, but no one would watch that. But you know, when you've got Kelly Slater and John John Florence and Carissa Moore and guys like John Pozzel, like when you have like that surf community and you have the beauty of Hawaii in the backdrop, it made it really compelling. What I didn't anticipate is how much that community of professional surfers on the North shore of Oahu would embrace this. And a lot of that is due to Peter King. mean, Peter King's relationships and his reputation as just being a, just a damn good human. I mean, he gave me access and, know, within a few weeks of our conversation, I'm sitting on the back porch of Kelly Slater's house, talking to him about sustainable packaging. And I'm like pinching myself, like, how did I end up here? But that's really how a Newport Earth Project began. was like, let's find some really fun industries like the outdoor industry. that understand environmental ethics and understand that sustainable packaging is a brand attribute, surely companies like that understand it and we'll use social media and media to tell these stories because we also recognized, and this is something I think is deeply human, that we're storytellers by our very nature and the story of humanity, it's a story. Story is how we... pass along things from generation to generation. And I also really began to believe that if we wanted to change the world in positive ways, we were going to do it through inspiring change, not shaming people or companies. We have to acknowledge the problem. We have to acknowledge that there's an issue here, but just pointing fingers. And I think that's where our world's gotten really messed up is everyone pointing fingers at each other and nothing gets accomplished. And this was our effort to say like, a sustainable revolution can be awesome and fun and inspiring. And that ultimately was the birth of a New Earth project. And it's had a real impact. And I wanna encourage people listening to this to watch those YouTube videos. I think there's eight. I've watched them all. They're incredible. Also going back to your grandfather, the editor and the dragon, that video on YouTube is awesome to watch. So if you want more on that, those stories, check out those videos. Yeah, if you'll go to our YouTube channel, A New Earth Project has a YouTube channel and the editor in the Dragon is a one hour documentary that PBS did on my grandfather and his story is narrated by Morgan Freeman actually. uh yeah, having your life narrated by Morgan Freeman, that alone says something. um Yeah, but, and yes, and then there is that eight part series called Journey to a New Earth that you can watch on our YouTube channel. or you can go to Amazon Prime and watch it as well and see kind of that whole process of developing that surfboard shipping system that by the way really has scaled. think we've got close to a hundred surfboard shapers of all shapes and sizes that are using our S3 and our S3 Pro for shipping single and multi packs of surfboards. And once we really had that going, then we started working with people like Burton Snowboards and... We started working in the ski industry and the mountain biking industry and the kayaking industry. And we started working with companies that are doing outdoor gear and backpacks and, and the rod and gun crowd as well. Like Bass Pro Shop Cabela's is a really big customer of ours. You know, we're in conversations with folks like Yeti and Sitka. And, but again, ultimately the outdoor industry, we really saw as what we like consider enlightened brands. that would embrace this first and really help us articulate it to all these other brands of literally like this revolution can be very supportive of your brand, of your brand image. Like sustainable packaging should be viewed through the lens of marketing, you know, and also environmental ethics as an organization. And that... I will say not just due to a new earth project, but a lot of factors, COVID being one of them, it created all this packaging awareness and waste awareness. All these things intersecting is driving the supply chain in a way that I didn't anticipate, but is really encouraging. And one of the beautiful things about it is it ultimately the power is with the people. know, like people ask me a lot, like what's gonna, what is gonna make this shift the most efficient? What is gonna be the thing that's gonna drive it the most? What can I do? Right. Right. consumer demand is gonna ship things far faster than any other single thing, more than legislation, even more than innovation. Consumers demanding healthy materials, sustainable packaging, healthy materials, healthy food, healthy everything. That revolution, I believe we are in the beginning stages of, I'm really encouraged. I'm incredibly hopeful. I I really believe that we're headed in the right direction as a... as a culture, as humanity. I do too. think people are fed up and they're, it's time to vote with our wallets and say, listen, I'm going to buy this because of these reasons. And one of the reasons is that you're using the right kind of packaging. And I, I'm getting feedback like that all the time on different social media channels. Hey, this is great. We should use this because of these reasons. And it might sound counterintuitive to some people that a president of a packaging company would say, we want you to use less. And I think. What you've done is created a truly loyal partnership system where our customers and partners are asking us to help them improve and make their packaging more sustainable. Well, you know, like ultimately, as I mentioned early on, my goal for our organization is not profit optimization. That's not the altar that we're worshiping at. You know, like just like my grandfather, I want to serve the greater good. Now, hey, if we don't have a profitable company, we can't serve anything. It all goes away. So profit is not a bad word. It's fundamental and we work really hard, to create programs that are profitable and run a healthy business. mean, a healthy business is a profitable business. But again, to me, it's all about like, what are you primarily focused on? And every organization can serve the greater good and the greater good for an automotive company or for an e-commerce company may be different than a packaging company. And you can have more than one greater good. You know, and we do, we have many greater, one of our greater goods is the health of our employees, you know? And so what we've tried to do is say, we want a profitable company, a highly profitable company, but we want that in service, you know, to something greater than the bottom line. And to me, all organizations, all industry of the future needs to be in service to one thing, and that is life. We need to be in service to life. In the entire known universe, the only place that life exists, as far as we know, is right here, which at a minimum makes it radically unique. I would argue it makes it radically spiritual and radically sacred. And once I had that awakening, I realized that like everything needs to be in service to this. Like why would we destroy the most unique sacred thing in the known universe. That's insanity. And so this awakening for me and the one that I hope that other people are having and I'm seeing it happening all over the place, it's real obvious. Once you start to pull that thread, you're like, duh, duh. Yeah, of course we should be in service to life. And of course we should be in service to. As the new guy at Atlantic, I've been on a whirlwind tour of many of our locations and every single place I go, they're pointing me to, this is our gym and there's always people in there working out and just absolutely impressed by how the focus of health of employees is top of the list of our benefits. Well, and that honestly, that, I was kind of skipped over that part of the story, but before a new earth project, you know, this has probably been 14 years ago. Now I launched a health and wellness program because I had stumbled into a yoga studio when I moved to Charleston and that practice resonated with me so much. And I started practicing yoga a lot and the yoga community. in Charleston introduced me to all kinds of people like nutritionists and body workers and energy workers. And like, I was like, wow, this is really enriching for my life. I was feeling better. was sleeping better. I was thinking better. And I felt like, you know, like I'm fortunate to have access to all these, modalities and these people, but you know, not everybody is. like, you know, that's not fair. shouldn't, I want to try to bring as much of this as I can into our organization. And I, when we started our health and wellness program, I, told the leadership, I was like, this is not about insurance premiums. This is about culture of the company. But the success of our wellness program really was about our employees. mean, our employees just jumped in and said, yes, we love this. And we tried to make it really fun and creative and engaging. And what ended up happening is it created incredible loyalty. It showed our employees that we deeply care about the health of them and their families. And if you want a great culture at a company, the way to do that is tenure. And, and that's ultimately what we're investing in. We're investing in the culture of our company, in the tenure of our employees. And also it's just common sense, like healthy employees, they're more creative. They work better, they show up on time, you know, they're more, they're more energized, you know, they're packed. when you're, mean, anyone who's ever been sick, it's really hard to create when you're sick. But when you're vibrant and healthy, creativity flows. And that's what we're trying to incubate at Atlantic. so health has just become the through line. We make all of our decisions from that place. And it's not perfect, obviously, but the world isn't perfect. I I'm more interested in progress. Yes. And I see it and it's, throughout the company. It's at every level and it's really exciting to be a part of that. So this has been incredible, Wes. I really appreciate you coming on the show. I did want to ask one more question. What's the best way for people to get in touch with you and with Atlantic packaging and a new earth project. Sure. Well, before I answer that, do want to plug one more thing, Cory, you don't mind. I did just want to say, because I want the listeners to understand the Atlantic of today and what it looks like. We still have this deeply mature packaging efficiency model. We have a packaging solution center in Charlotte, North Carolina that celebrates eight years, actually just last week. And that is a fundamental part of our value proposition, highly efficient packaging consulting services. driving out waste. have this 30 % of our revenues come from manufacturing, which today is primarily in fiber based solutions. And we're actually vertically integrating a lot of sustainable retail packaging for the same customers that we're doing the efficiency model for. So things like you've seen paper form and fish bone and the cruise cooler, like all of our manufacturing is supporting these retail packaging options for our customers as well. And then the third leg of the stool today is New Earth Ventures, headed up by Matt Saunders that we launched last year, where we're, it's our first venture arm, and we're incubating technology, sustainable technology from a portfolio of companies that are a lot of young entrepreneurs and scaling things like seaweed for plastics or mycelium or hemp. or other fiber base, we're working on a lot of coding. So everything we're doing at Atlantic is working to incubate and scale packaging efficiency, closed loops and sustainable nature-based materials all in service to life. So that is the company that I've been trying to build with the help of a tremendously talented group of people that you've come to know. My senior leadership is Epic. My New Earth team is epic. It is the most amazing group of human beings that I absolutely adore. mean, it is family and you can feel it at Atlantic. But if you want to find me, I'm really active on LinkedIn. So you can just look up Wes Carter Atlantic on LinkedIn. My Instagram handle is Wes M. Carter. You can also follow and I encourage you to follow A New Earth Project on Instagram. and, um, I'm not going to give out my phone number today, but, um, yeah, Instagram and LinkedIn. you follow those two things, that's a good place to find me. then I do a lot of podcasts too. So, um, look me up on, your podcast. I just did one with Nate Hagens, recently that a lot of people have given me good feedback on. So that one's relatively new and, and now we have this one. It's exciting to be a part of this team and you're exactly right. Yeah, there's so many ways to get in touch with you and with the team at Atlantic Packaging and New Earth Project that there's just no more excuses. Reach out to us and we'll help you out today. Thank you. And finally, I just say to anybody, know, brands, packaging companies, like, you know, let's do this. Let, we have the potential and the capabilities to do something profound for the world that our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren will all benefit from. Like we are in a legacy moment. And I really believe packaging professionals working with consumer products companies and retail brands over the next eight or 10 years can do something profound for the world. And, it takes all of us and we, have to do this together. And it's why the new earth project, our tagline is we do this together. It is a, it is a group effort. And this is all about moving the world into a better place, into a healthier place, into a more harmonious place, into more reciprocal place with all life. So, my honor to be with you, Cory, I am super stoked. You're a part of this team. And, um, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna push the podcast and keep interviewing amazing human beings. all over the world. I agree and it all starts with you here and it all starts with it feels like we're jumping off together into this great abyss of amazing things that are going to happen. So I can't wait to tell everybody what's going on. But thanks again, Mr. Carter for being on. My pleasure. Thank you, sir. What a great way to kick off this next stage of my career at Atlantic Packaging. Big thanks to Wes Carter for being my first guest, to my colleagues at Atlantic, and to our sponsors, SpecRite, CruiseFoam, and Fishbone. And be sure to tune in next Monday when I will welcome Sydney Munoz, the sustainability manager at Goodwill International, for an inspiring and enlightening conversation. That's all. I'm Cory Connors. See you next week.