Meet Lynne Pascal, our Director, Supply Chain Sustainability. Her passion for helping Ciena reach our goals has driven some exciting achievements in our sustainability journey.
Ask sustainability professionals where some of the most significant opportunities lie to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and many will tell you its in the supply chain. In fact, when we measure our carbon footprint, approximately 25% of our emissions can be traced back to our supply chain. This makes it the perfect place to ramp up our sustainability efforts—and we’ve made some exciting strides recently.
With the dedication of passionate team members who are thinking about these topics daily, we have worked closely with our suppliers to help drive Ciena towards our sustainability goals. To celebrate our progress, we’re putting the spotlight on one of these sustainability superstars.
Becoming an environmental sustainability leader
Lynne Pascal is a key member of our Environmental Steering Committee. Lynne initially joined Ciena as a software developer within the research and development team and has since worked in several different areas of the business including project management, marketing, and sales before joining the supply chain team in her current sustainability-focused role.
Both supply chain and sustainability presented new challenges for Lynne, who brought her curiosity and passion for education to the role. Learning the intricacies of supplier engagement, logistics, packaging, and the circular economy while also learning to identify opportunities and approaches for reducing emissions in each area inspired a new passion in Lynne.
I love my job. It’s technical, there’s loads to learn, and it’s collaborative.
She took to the role immediately, enjoying the technical nature of the work. “It’s scientific and data-based” she says, which not only aligns with her engineering background but also provides the satisfying ability to measure the impact of her work. This, combined with the sense of purpose derived from doing challenging work that contributes to an important cause, is incredibly motivating for Lynne.
She says, “it was really useful to admit that I didn't know very much for the first six months. It gave me the ability to focus on learning and leaning on people and just being super curious about everything.” After dedicating some time to learning as much as possible about her new discipline, Lynne began the transition from learner to leader.
She embraced the challenge of becoming the expert and was empowered to use her knowledge to drive projects, set goals, and inspire others. In her position, collaborating with others across the entire range of supply chain activities is essential to making progress, and so she leveraged her learnings to educate others about sustainability best practices and guide initiatives toward sustainable solutions.
If you're strategic and you're focused and you rally everybody around a particular goal, you can make incredible progress.
Giving our packaging a sustainability makeover
One of Lynne’s favorite achievements so far was setting a goal of ensuring our packaging is made from 70% recycled content by weight across all product packaging, which we achieved in 2024. She worked closely with our packaging suppliers to determine a goal that would be best-in-class while also being practical and realistic.
As a result, she implemented a set of “Golden Design Rules” which include:
- Minimizing the overall size and weight of our packaging
- Minimizing the use of foam
- Maximizing the use of recycled content for all packaging materials
Following these rules means we not only minimize waste but also increase the number of products we can ship at one time, decreasing emissions from transportation and further reducing our environmental impact.
Now that we’ve achieved the initial goal, Lynne is working to increase the amount of recyclable content in our packaging up to 95% by working with our suppliers on the sustainability of the packaging they provide and exploring multipack solutions for high-volume shipments.
Our teams are also working toward using packaging that is not only made from recycled content but also is as close to 100% recyclable as possible to continue reducing waste and its associated impacts.
We’ve also started including information on how best to recycle our packaging for our customers, with convenient QR codes added to the box that link to specific recycling instructions. Providing sustainable packaging and information on recycling has the added benefit of illustrating for our customers that sustainability is a priority. It’s a concrete way of proving that we’re taking our commitments seriously and they can rely on Ciena to be a supportive collaborator for their own work on measuring and reducing emissions.
Finding inspiration in the possibilities of the future
Lynne takes inspiration from thinking about the possibilities and achievements to come in the near- and long-term future. As technology continues to advance, Lynne is excited to see what new developments will be created that help us achieve our goals—both in terms of technology that will directly reduce emissions and the tools we use to measure that progress. She says, "I want to see us hit our near-term science-based targets, due 2030, and I’m excited to see what comes next. What does that next step look like for our products, or our packaging?”
How anyone can support sustainability in the workplace
For anyone interested in advancing sustainability in the workplace, regardless of their role, Lynne recommends getting involved whatever way you can. Whether that’s starting an office green team or speaking up when you see an opportunity to save energy or reduce waste, you can make a meaningful difference at any scale.
To learn more about the amazing strides Lynne and others like her have made in sustainability, read our latest Sustainability Report.