Brian D Schell

Brian Schell is a former thermoforming manufacturer and business owner with decades of experience in packaging, operations, safety systems, and manufacturing leadership. After spending much of his career operating Buckell Plastics, a family-owned thermoforming company founded by his father in 1964, he began focusing on larger systems-level issues involving packaging, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), recycling, product design, and microplastics.

His writing combines practical manufacturing experience with a broader interest in how products, materials, infrastructure, regulation, and downstream environmental impacts interact over time. Rather than approaching these topics from a purely academic or activist perspective, Schell writes from the viewpoint of someone who spent years working directly inside manufacturing and packaging systems.

He is the author of Producer Under Pressure, The Buckell Years, and The Consumer Guide to Microplastics. His recent work focuses on lifecycle thinking, packaging systems, consumer awareness, and the growing connection between design decisions and downstream consequences.

Schell currently lives in Pennsylvania and continues to write, develop intellectual property, and speak on systems-oriented approaches to packaging, recovery, and end-of-life design.