Job Description
Global Head of Sustainable Products & Packaging -Circularity & Value Chain Transformation
Department: Circ. & Value Chain Trans. : Advisory
Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time
Location: Flexible
Lead one of the defining transitions of the decade.
We're looking for a leader who understands where circular systems are heading and wants the platform to shape what comes next.
This isn't a role focused on producing strategies alone. You'll help clients design pilots, prove commercial value, build infrastructure, unlock investment and scale solutions that work.
You'll set the direction for a global practice, grow a significant business, and help some of the world's leading organisations turn circularity into a value system.
Anthesis is a platform to multiply your impact.
We're looking for a builder. Someone who's spent years deep in sustainable products and packaging — EPR, PPWR, eco-design, chemistry, reuse and refill — and is ready to build a global practice around it.
You'll inherit a strong client portfolio, an experienced technical team, and a market moving faster than most firms can keep up with. Your job is to set the vision, grow the business, and make Anthesis the leader in this space.
If you're the kind of person who reads a new regulation — or a shift in trade flows, raw-material costs, or consumer behavior — and immediately sees the commercial opportunity inside it; who can build the strategy, marshal the team to model the ROI, and help a client pilot and scale it, not just hand them a deck — keep reading.
Why This Role Exists
Sustainable products and packaging is one of the fastest-moving areas in the circular economy. EPR regimes are expanding and fragmenting across jurisdictions. Digital Product Passports are coming. Green claims rules are tightening. Brands are under pressure to rethink everything from design to end-of-life — faster than most can track on their own. But the real opportunity isn't compliance. It's for the early movers who innovate ahead of the rules and turn that into lasting competitive advantage.
Our clients — global brands across consumer goods, retail, tech, beauty, food and beverage, pharma, and fashion — need different things at different moments. Sometimes a clear strategy; sometimes a partner who'll go all the way through to execution. We meet them where they are at and increasingly combining deep sustainability expertise with AI, digital tools, and emerging technology to deliver faster and better.
We've built strong foundations. Now we need the leader to take it further — someone who pairs real technical credibility with commercial instinct, a builder's mentality, and the drive to turn that into lasting value for clients.
Key Responsibilities
This role spans several dimensions. You'll be stronger in some than others, but you should have the appetite and the capability to lead across all of them:
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Set the vision, own the strategy. Craft a compelling, forward-looking vision for where this portfolio goes next — grounded in client need, market reality, and Anthesis's ambition to 2030 and beyond. Define what winning looks like: which solutions to accelerate, which to incubate, which to sunset — and rally the organisation behind it. Translate that into a multi-year growth plan with clear milestones, investment priorities, and measurable outcomes.
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Know the landscape cold. Maintain a deep, continuously updated read on regulatory and market shifts across jurisdictions — EPR evolution, DPP timelines, green claims enforcement, chemical and packaging mandates. Translate that complexity into clear strategic options, bring in the right teams to quantify the impact, and lay out the path forward — whether that's meeting what's required or getting ahead of it for advantage.
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Know our client's world Build a deep, ongoing understanding of what your clients are facing — competitive dynamics, supply chain complexity, cost pressures — and the commercial opportunities that sit inside that complexity. Be the partner who sees what's coming and helps them get ahead of it. Position Anthesis as more than an advisor: the partner that truly understands the client's business and helps them win.
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Go beyond decks — build, test, scale. We don't toss strategies over the wall and hope they land. We get into the trenches with clients and go the full distance — helping them innovate, test, learn, and then actually do it: pilot new approaches, prove the economics, operationalize what works, and scale it. [reuse systems, reformulated products, new packaging formats as examples of what gets built] ... partner with specialist teams to build the business cases that give executives the confidence to invest at scale. Harness AI, digital tools, and emerging technology to deliver faster, sharper, more cost-effective. Scale what works. Kill what doesn't.
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Drive Commercial Growth: Own the revenue targets, pipeline, and forecasting for a substantial, established portfolio — and grow it materially. Shift the model from pure advisory toward digitally enabled managed services, transformation programmes, and recurring revenue. Innovate on pricing — value-based, outcome-linked. Strengthen the value story. Improve margins.
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Connect across the organization. Work across Anthesis business lines, geographies, and sector teams to unlock client value that wouldn't exist in silos. Spot the adjacencies: when a client conversation reveals a supply chain challenge, a resource recovery need, or a data gap, connect it to the right capability — including your counterpart's portfolio. Partner with the other Growth Portfolio Leads and senior leadership on cross-cutting innovation, AI, and go-to-market.
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Build and lead a high-performing team. Lead a diverse group of senior technical experts — deep expertise, strong opinions, different working styles — and unify them around a shared direction without relying on hierarchy. Build on the team's deep technical strength by adding commercial, strategy and emerging-tech depth as the practice grows, so every addition raises the bar. Lead through change with directness, empathy, and respect — making the hard calls when they're needed, and bringing people with you.
- R epresent Anthesis at the highest level. Be the senior external face of Anthesis's products and packaging capability — at industry forums, in regulatory discussions, in client boardrooms. Build the kind of trusted relationships where you're the first call when the big strategic decisions get made. Elevate conversations beyond the immediate brief, and help clients think bigger than they would alone.
Technical Scope & Domains
This role requires genuine technical fluency to engage alongside packaging engineers, regulatory experts, brand sustainability directors, and CFOs, while connecting dots to broader Anthesis capabilities.
Domains You Will Own:
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Sustainable Product Design: Integrating circularity, low-impact materials, and verifiable data to enable compliant-by-design innovation.
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Sustainable Packaging Design: Material selection, recyclability, trade-offs, emerging material technologies, and regulatory alignment (including PPWR).
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Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR): Multi-jurisdictional compliance, fee modulation, scheme evolution, and strategic value creation.
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Product Chemistry & Material Health: Chemical compliance, restricted substance management, full material disclosure, and safer alternatives.
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Sustainable Shopping & Consumer Behaviour: Intersecting purchasing decisions with sustainability messaging, product design, and retail strategy.
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Reuse & Refill (product & packaging design): Designing refillable and reusable product and packaging formats — materials, formats, and pack engineering that make reuse viable. (The operating models, reverse logistics, and system economics that scale reuse sit with Circular Systems & Resource Recovery — your counterpart's portfolio.)
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Digital Product Passports (DPP): Emerging requirements, data architecture, supply chain implications, and commercial opportunities.
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AI, Digital Tools & Innovation: Deploying emerging tech (AI compliance tools, predictive modeling, automation) to design, deliver, and scale solutions.
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Business Case & Financial Modelling: Structuring compelling financial business cases and ROI models that give executives the confidence to act.
Domains You Will Collaborate On:
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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) & Product Carbon Footprinting: Owned by Impact Intelligence — brought in to support design decisions and justify investments.
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Green Claims & Substantiation: Owned by Impact Intelligence — mitigating risks regarding EU Green Claims, FTC Guides, and frameworks.
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Supply Chain Transparency & Responsible Sourcing: Owned by Value Chain Transformation — managing due diligence, supplier engagement, and decarbonisation.
- Circular Systems & Resource Recovery: Owned by your counterpart's portfolio — end-of-life, waste, secondary markets, and the circular business and revenue models (product-as-a-service, take-back, refill economics) those systems run on. Products & Packaging shapes the product and pack design those models depend on
Key Requirements: Skills, Knowledge & Expertise
10+ years in sustainability consulting or industry, with significant time in the relevant domain.
- Background in professional services/consulting (understanding utilization, margins, and practice growth).
- Established industry network bringing immediate credibility and access to doors.
- Technical or engineering degree preferred. Master’s degree or MBA highly valued.
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Languages: Fluent English required.
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Global Flexibility: Willingness to travel for client and leadership engagements.
Job Benefits
Why Anthesis? Build and lead a global practice in one of the fastest-moving areas of sustainability. Take ownership of a portfolio with real scale, world-class clients, and a mandate to grow it significantly. Work alongside a talented, mission-driven team that takes the work seriously and each other kindly. Join a consultancy that’s growing fast, investing in AI and innovation, and thinking long-term. Have the autonomy to set a vision, make bold bets, and see them through.
- Work within a highly motivated team in an innovative and rapidly growing global company
- Opportunity to have a direct impact and be a key part of the growth and development of the business and the team
- Work solely on projects that have an impact on the sustainability and climate change goals/challenges for clients
- Opportunity to work with, collaborate with and learn from sustainability SME’s who are passionate about the work they do and the impact Anthesis can have
- Exposure to a wide range of clients and projects on a global basis
- Competitive salary in line with, experience and skills
- Competitive benefits including flexible working, 25 days holiday and two volunteering days off and the day off for your Birthday!
- An opportunity to participate in the Anthesis Employee Participation Plan (EPP), an industry-pioneering employee incentive plan that allows all employees to be rewarded for the growth in the equity value of Anthesis.
- Cooperative, supportive and open working atmosphere.
We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team and encourage applications from all backgrounds.
