--- title: Sustainability & Packaging Specialist canonical: https://csrjobs.club/jobs/evergreen-garden-care-sustainability-packaging-specialist-j3fh locale: en description: Evergreen Garden Care is hiring a Sustainability & Packaging Specialist on CSR Jobs. Discover this in-house sustainability role and apply today. updated: 2026-10-14 company: Evergreen Garden Care country: Australia contract: Full time seniority: Mid-level missions: Strategic planning, Product Environmental Footprint, ESG reporting, Purchasing, Stakeholders engagement job_type: Sustainability Manager posted: 2026-10-14 valid_through: 2026-12-14 apply: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4479233843 source: CSR Jobs --- # Sustainability & Packaging Specialist This role hands you two intertwined mandates: run Evergreen Garden Care's sustainability programme for Australasia and turn the company's packaging into something genuinely recyclable. Day to day that means coordinating cross-functional working groups, tracking progress against annual targets, and pushing through packaging trials with suppliers and internal teams. The impact angle is unusually tangible. Packaging is where a garden-care manufacturer's environmental footprint lives, and Evergreen has staked its consumer promise on greener spaces. Improving recyclability, raising recycled content and aligning with **APCO and ARL requirements** turn abstract circular economy language into changes consumers can actually see on the shelf. This suits someone who can hold a spreadsheet, a supplier conversation and a sustainability roadmap at the same time, and who likes moving from strategy to packaging trial without losing either thread. ## Job FAQs ### What are the main missions and responsibilities of this role? This role carries a genuinely dual mandate, splitting time between corporate sustainability programming and hands-on packaging transformation. On the sustainability side, the specialist develops, delivers and reports against the organisation's strategy and annual plan, coordinates cross-functional working groups, and provides regular performance updates to leadership. That means translating high-level environmental objectives into deliverables that other teams can own. On the packaging side, the work is more technical and project-based. Expect to maintain a packaging sustainability roadmap, lead trials that improve recyclability or increase recycled content, coordinate supplier engagement, and manage **APCO reporting** with accurate supporting data. Artwork reviews, packaging data management and compliance checks sit alongside this. The overarching goal is to make sure Evergreen Australasia's stated environmental ambitions are matched by measurable packaging outcomes, not just plans, but verified movement on recyclability, circularity and regulatory alignment. ### Key learning opportunities for this job The most obvious learning curve is packaging sustainability in the Australian regulatory context. Deep familiarity with **APCO, the PREP evaluation tool, the Australasian Recycling Label and the national packaging targets** is a specialised skill set, and this role sits right at the centre of that ecosystem. That knowledge is portable across any FMCG or consumer goods employer. Beyond compliance, you would likely build project management muscle across a wide stakeholder map, R&D, marketing, procurement, operations, quality and external suppliers. Coordinating packaging trials that must balance quality, cost and recyclability is a genuinely complex brief, and doing it well sharpens your ability to influence without direct authority. There may also be exposure to international sustainability reporting requirements, given Evergreen's European parent operations. That cross-border dimension could offer insight into how sustainability governance and disclosure differ between the EU and Australasian frameworks. ### How does the ideal candidate look like (experience, skills)? The posting is fairly specific: a tertiary qualification in packaging technology, sustainability, environmental science, engineering, materials science or a related discipline, plus demonstrated experience delivering packaging initiatives in FMCG, consumer products, agriculture or chemicals. Someone coming from a pure ESG-reporting background without packaging exposure would likely find the technical side steep. On skills, you need to be comfortable interpreting technical documentation and specifications, packaging trials generate data that has to be read correctly. Strong project management across competing priorities is essential, as is the ability to build relationships with suppliers and internal teams who may not naturally prioritise sustainability. Experience with **SAP or similar ERP systems** would be a practical advantage. Soft skills matter here. The role requires influencing procurement, R&D and marketing simultaneously, so a candidate who can frame sustainability arguments in commercial language (cost efficiency, supply chain resilience, brand value) is probably going to be more effective than one who leads purely with environmental rationale. ### Advice to stand out and make a successful application The posting explicitly asks for a cover letter addressed to the **R&D Director**, which is a strong signal about where this role sits organisationally and who is screening. Address the letter accordingly and use it to show you understand that this is a technical packaging role as much as a sustainability one, not a generic corporate responsibility job. In your resume, lead with concrete packaging outcomes rather than policy or strategy language. Specific examples of recyclability improvements, recycled content projects, supplier trials or APCO submissions will resonate more than broad sustainability programme descriptions. If you have used the PREP tool or worked with the ARL, make that explicit early. For the interview, expect questions about how you balance sustainability ambition against commercial constraints, quality, cost, shelf life. Evergreen's values include "Own It" and "Always Better," so prepare examples where you drove an improvement through to measurable completion rather than just proposing it. Familiarity with Australian packaging regulations will likely be probed. ### What aspects of the company's sustainability is this role likely to focus on? The centre of gravity here is **packaging circularity**. Garden care products (fertilisers, pesticides, potting mixes, lawn treatments) come with significant packaging footprints, and this role exists to reduce them. That means recyclability improvements, recycled content targets, and alignment with the Australian packaging sustainability targets and APCO obligations. The second focus area is the organisation's broader sustainability strategy for Australasia. The specialist coordinates the annual plan, monitors progress against targets, and handles local and international reporting. Given Evergreen's European parent operations, there could be a reporting line into group-level ESG frameworks. A third, less explicit thread is consumer-facing credibility. Evergreen's brand promise is built around green spaces, so packaging that contradicts that promise is a reputational risk. This role likely sits at the intersection of compliance, brand integrity and genuine environmental improvement, with the commercial tension that comes with all three. ### What are the main challenges someone in this role might face? The structural challenge is that sustainability and packaging improvements often compete with cost and operational priorities. Garden care is a competitive retail category, and packaging changes ripple through supply chains, artwork and shelf presentation. A specialist in this position will likely need to make the commercial case for changes rather than simply asserting the environmental one. The regulatory environment is also moving. Australian packaging targets and **APCO requirements** are evolving, and keeping the organisation ahead of, rather than reactive to, those changes requires sustained monitoring. Add international reporting expectations from the European side, and the compliance surface area is broad. A third challenge is influence without authority. Much of the work runs through R&D, procurement, operations and suppliers who have their own objectives. Sustaining momentum on multi-stakeholder projects over long timelines, without direct control over the people doing the work, is a real test of relationship-building and follow-through. ### How could a typical day look like for someone in this position? Days would likely blend analytical work with coordination. Mornings might involve reviewing packaging data, updating APCO documentation or assessing a supplier's technical submission. This is a role with a significant desk component, spreadsheets, specification documents, reporting templates. Much of the week would be spent in cross-functional meetings: aligning with R&D on a packaging trial, working with procurement on supplier engagement, checking artwork revisions with marketing, or updating operations on implementation timelines. The breadth of stakeholders means calendar management is itself a skill here. There would also be a strategic rhythm, monthly or quarterly progress tracking against the annual sustainability plan, preparing updates for leadership, and scanning for regulatory or market developments. Some weeks would tilt heavily technical, others more programme-management oriented, depending on where projects sit in their lifecycle. ### What are the opportunities for professional growth and development in this role? The clearest growth path runs deeper into packaging sustainability leadership, owning the roadmap rather than contributing to it, and potentially building a team as the function matures. Given that packaging regulation is tightening across Australasia, this expertise is becoming more valuable, not less. There is also lateral potential. Evergreen operates across Europe and Australasia with multiple market-leading brands, so a strong performer could plausibly move into a group-level sustainability role or a broader ESG position as the organisation formalises its reporting. The international dimension creates options that a purely domestic employer would not. Shorter term, the role offers visibility with senior stakeholders including the R&D Director and counterparts in procurement and marketing. Successfully delivering a packaging initiative that hits both sustainability and commercial targets is the kind of outcome that builds a credible case for advancement. ### The main stakeholders you might be interacting with Internally, the closest working relationships would be with R&D, particularly given the reporting line to the R&D Director, along with marketing, procurement, operations and quality. Each brings a different lens: R&D on technical feasibility, marketing on consumer perception and artwork, procurement on supplier leverage and cost, operations on implementation practicality. Externally, suppliers are central. Packaging improvements depend on what suppliers can actually deliver in terms of materials, recycled content and production capability, so the specialist would likely spend considerable time in technical conversations with packaging manufacturers and material providers. Industry bodies connected to **APCO** would be another external touchpoint. There may also be interaction with parent-company or international colleagues on reporting alignment, given that Evergreen operates sustainability programmes across multiple regions. The stakeholder map is wide, which is both the challenge and the interest of the role. --- Source: https://csrjobs.club/jobs/evergreen-garden-care-sustainability-packaging-specialist-j3fh