Melissa Paxton Steiner is a Board Member and Co-Owner of Kwik Lok Corporation.
She graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication. Melissa worked in the fashion industry for over 20 years in numerous jobs including sales, buying and merchandising. She has been a board member since 2018 which includes serving on the CSR and Audit committees. Melissa is a third-generation co-owner with her two sisters in the family business, Kwik Lok Corporation. Family owned and locally inspired. Kwik Lok is the originator of the first bag closure and the global leader in package closures. Founded in Yakima, Washington, in 1954 by her grandfather Floyd Paxton. Our beginnings were humble and our mission is simple - make sure the food people eat is being kept fresh and safe. In over 60 years we ve been in business, we have branched out from our humble bag closure beginnings and we are now pleased to offer bag closures, closing equipment, labels, and pri
This article is sponsored by Kwik Lok.
The transformation of Kwik Lok from a family-owned manufacturing company in Washington state into an international packaging company with a focus on the triple bottom line has been an interesting journey. In just three years, we’ve evolved from that company that makes bread tag bag closures in Yakima to an organization focused on making a difference globally.
In that time, we’ve experienced a number of revelations about developing a sustainability and social responsibility strategy we thought would be enlightening to share. They range from what the company learned about establishing a diversity policy where none existed before to the steps necessary in refocusing product innovation to meet our own sustainability goals and support our customers in achieving theirs.
February 23, 2021
There is a renewed focus on what corporate money can and should be doing in the philanthropy space. Via Shutterstock.
In 2020, philanthropic donations by major donors saw an almost 7 percent increase on a year-to-date basis. As companies direct more of their money to external charitable causes, internally decision-makers are assessing how the companies philanthropic efforts tie into their values, corporate responsibilities and sustainability strategies.
For many, this includes weaving sustainability into their already established practices. Jeannette Astorga, head of sustainability at Zoetis, explained during the recent GreenBiz 21 event that the company’s philanthropy needs to be strategic and in line with the company s sustainability strategy.
Bird Song of the Day
26 minutes (!) of a Snow Oil foraging and feeding its young. Impressive dedication.
#COVID19
At reader request, I’ve added these daily charts from 91-DIVOC. The data is the Johns Hopkins CSSE data. Here is the site. I feel I’m engaging in a macabre form of tape-watching…. (A reader asked the source of the data: Johns Hopkins CSSE. DIVOC-91 does allow other data sets to be used, like Our World in Data and The Atlantic, and where they provide visualizations similar to those below, a cursory comparison shows that the shape of the curves is the same.)
February 3, 2021
Kwik Lok has joined the U.S. Plastics Pact, a collaborative, solutions-driven initiative rooted in four ambitious goals intended to drive significant systems change by unifying diverse cross-sector approaches, setting a national strategy, and creating scalable solutions to create a path forward toward a circular economy for plastics in the United States by 2025. The first North American Pact of its kind, the U.S. Pact is a collaboration led by The Recycling Partnership, World Wildlife Fund, and Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
As a member of the U.S. Pact, Kwik Lok joins more than 70 brands, retailers, NGOs, and government agencies across the plastics value chain to bring one voice to U.S. packaging through coordinated initiatives and innovative solutions for rethinking products and business models.