How a navigation system on sustainable use of plastics could help in the transformation.
Malin talks about how the roadmap for sustainable use of plastics could help businesses in the transformation towards a circular plastics economy, together with the national plastics coordinator Åsa Stenmarck, at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. The talk is framed around these questions
Q1. What priority areas are there? (00:23)
Q2. How big of a leap does it mean for me as a producer? (02:41)
Q3. How could businesses approach the ambition to stop the leakage? (05:24)
Jane sums it all up with the question we should keep on top of our minds - about the very existence of the products put on the market.
Credits
Artwork: Giancarlo Mitidieri
Jingle: Frans Sjöberg
Malin:
Åsa, I'm thinking of the Swedish EPA's roadmap for sustainable use of plastic and it almost reminds me of some sort of a navigation system for collective action towards more sustainable and generative use of plastics. What priority areas are there?
Åsa:
So first of all, I'd like to say, I'm so pleased that you call this navigation system for sustainable plastic use because that's exactly our intention with the roadmap! We wanted to create some sort of, yeah, roadmap to show all different actors where you could start acting basically and where we are heading. But we call them effect areas and we have four of them priority areas, as you said, and before mentioning them, just highlighting that it's equally important that we work with all of these four areas. So to name them, we have called them 1) raw materials and production with minimal environmental impact, 2) resource usage, 3) reduced plastic leakage in nature, and 4) significantly increased and high quality material recycling. So these are the four different areas.
Malin:
And these are all equally important, as you said?
Åsa:
Yeah. We actually did a scenario work prior to the roadmap or when developing the roadmap, and I think we thought in the beginning that we will end up with one, like one scenario that we could go for. This is what we're heading for, but it turned out that it wasn't so easy. That the scenarios per se was maybe not so interesting. But to define these different areas and to realize that okay, but it is not enough. For example, if we just maximize recycling, we won't reach what we intend to reach with sustainable plastic use just by doing that. We also need to work with the raw materials and the use of plastic, for example. So they're all aligned, of course, as well. And what you would do within one area will also have an effect in another area, perhaps. But yeah. So try to keep them all in mind, even though maybe you for some reason for one moment, you focus on one of them to do better there. But they, we all need from a policy perspective, we definitely need to work with them all at the same time.
Malin:
And looking at all of them at the same time and also thinking of how we produce and consume plastic products and packaging today, and the difference to where we should be. How big of a leap does that mean for me as a producer?
Åsa:
It's maybe not a gigantic leap, but it's big leap at least. So you have to think of many things, starting actually with the very, maybe sometimes scary question, like is my product needed at all? We need to stop thinking in products in terms of putting products into market and thinking more like, okay, what service is needed? What function do we need to fulfill with this product? So for a bookshelf, obviously it's keeping your books in order and having some sort of overview of them. So, could we get that function in another way, perhaps, and what. So, and then to continue that thought with, okay, if my product is needed, is plastic the best material? And if plastic is the best material, what kind of plastic could I use and how should I think about recyclability?
Could I use recycled materials for myself? And then is how is the wear and tear of my product? Will it generate micro plastics, perhaps? So, it's an enormous amount of questions that you could ask yourself. And I believe that producers and designers out there, they ask themselves perhaps some of these questions, but maybe not all. And saying that it's not necessary that you sort of ask yourself all the questions all the time, but definitely the first one is this need, what can, instead of asking what product should I produce asking what kind of service or function is needed and how could I fulfill that? Is the best way to start.
Malin:
And it almost sounds like a shift in mindset to start questioning even more.
Åsa:
Yeah, definitely. So one example of today is the implementation of the Single-use Plastics Directive, where we have straws, for example. So straws in plastic is now forbidden. Okay. Right. What has happened? We see straws in all kinds of different other materials. While maybe we should ask ourselves, do we really need a straw or when do we need a straw? So that's, yeah. It's a completely shift in, in thinking basically, that needs to take place.
Malin:
Yeah. Like the very existence of the product itself. But looking at all these four priority areas and also thinking of the leakage or what comes out of the system as we have it today. What could a business do to approach the ambition to stop the leakage?
Åsa:
Well, my hope is that you could work, of course, with the design of your products. So how, how is my product designed for packaging? For example, we know that these little corners that are easily torn off could be reduced significantly by clever design. Do I really need wrapping on all the different, small things that I have in a bigger bag, for example. So try to think in these kinds of, okay from my products perspective, what items is surrounding the product that could end up in littering and how could I work with that from a design perspective? So I think the design could play a bigger role than maybe you think in the first place. Because when you think about littering, often you think about waste paper bins out in the cities, cleaning activities, these kinds of nudging to use the right products, etcetera, and sort waste for example. But I think we could talk more about the design actually, when it comes to littering and how the design could help in that matter, which is also of course, closer to the producer and more easy to have an impact on if you are the producer.
Jane:
So, that was an in-depth discussion about the mid-sized lead business will make transitioning towards sustainable use of plastics. Let Swedish EPA's roadmap be used as the navigation system it should be. And also, as Åsa said, dare to question the very existence of the products you put on the market. Do we really need them? Do they serve a purpose? Is the material they are made of and the life cycles they are a part of, the very best choice?