Sophie Walker wins 2025 Digital Transformation Leader packaging award
16 July 2025
Our data intelligence Principal Consultant, Sophie Walker, has scooped up the award for Digital Transformation Leader at the inaugural Women in Packaging Excellence Awards.
Celebrating women who are driving the UK packaging sector forward and championing a more inclusive, innovative, and sustainable future for packaging, Sophie has been recognised for her efforts in using technology to innovate and create smarter processes and solutions for the packaging industry.
As Co-Founder of Dsposal, Sophie has led several major projects including the PPP Phase 2 project on packaging data (funded by Innovate UK) which led to the development of the Open 3P data standard for packaging and the GING data sharing platform.
Earlier this year, Sophie and the Dsposal team joined Resource Futures on a six-month secondment, which was recently extended for an additional three months. This formal partnership combines resources and expertise in data gathering and technical innovation to transform the use of data intelligence in the waste and resources sector.
Current projects include developing a London waste data model for ReLondon and updating the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) tool used across Resource Futures’ communities-focused work. Sophie has also been supporting our longstanding project working with the BRS Secretariat to help countries around the world to conduct a plastic waste inventory using the Resource Futures-developed toolkit. This including a recent trip to Panama to run a workshop with teams from Panama, Guatemala and Honduras as well as online workshops with Zambia, Nepal and Zimbabwe.
“It was a total shock when they read my name out; I was completely blown away!” said Sophie. “I feel incredibly lucky to work with such an inspiring team that shares my passion for meaningful digital transformation that truly supports the shift to regenerative business; that passion has only deepened through our current partnership with Resource Futures.
“I’m buzzing with ideas about how we can help the packaging ecosystem move towards a more circular economy through better data and insights. From waste composition studies to evaluating take-back schemes, from supporting countries just beginning to measure plastic waste to bringing waste modelling to life with city-level visualisations – we’ve got an amazing group of colleagues ready to deliver real impact.”
On a mission to revolutionise resource data, Sophie’s work is drawing attention. Just last year, Sophie was named ‘Innovator of the Year’ in the 2024 Resource Hot 100; she has been nominated again for the 2025 Awards alongside her Dsposal and Resource Futures colleagues Tom Passmore, Sam Reeve, Gwen Frost and Bethan Jones. Voting for the awards is open to all and closes on Wednesday 30th July 2025.
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