What the SUP directive means in practice for business.
Malin explores what the SUP directive means in practice for business and what some of the first steps to be taken are to be aligned with the Directive, with Frida Änghede, Public Affairs Manager at the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation. And also, speaking of actions, Malin and Jane are sharing a tool to get a snapshot of some of the things to consider when approaching the SUP directive and sustainable use of plastics.
The talk is framed around these questions:
Q1: Could you explain the SUP directive like I’m five? (01:40)
Q2: If you were a business affected by this, what would be your long term ban game plan? (02:09)
Q3: If you were a business not really affected by this, what would you do? (04:15)
LINKS
Live scribe summarising the plan of the ban
Credits:
Artwork: Giancarlo Mitidieri
Jingle: Frans Sjöberg
Malin:
This is the podcast where we are following the progress of transforming the market on plastic products and packaging in Sweden, ultimately moving away from taking, making and wasting to a circular plastics economy.
I'm Malin Leth, and I'm the host and today, we have Frida Änghede with us, Public Affairs Manager at the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation. So, in this episode, we'll be talking about what the Single-Use Plastics Directive means in practice for business, and also, hang in there with us until the very end of this episode because we will be sharing a tool to get a snapshot of some of the things to consider when approaching the Single-Use Plastics Directive and sustainable use of plastics.
The Single-Use Plastics Directive is a legislation aiming to curb plastic pollution. There's really more to it than just the straws. Frida, let's talk about the plan of the ban. We've got a 10 or nine-item long list that are no longer allowed to be sold or to be really clear, I think the stores are still allowed to sell off whatever they have on the shelves, but it's not allowed to put new items from that list on the market.
Frida:
Yeah.
Malin:
Could you explain the SUP Directive for me as if I would be five years old?
Frida:
Yeah. The aim is to reduce all plastic waste because they found a lot of plastic in the seas everywhere in Europe, so they decided to do a directive just to reduce all the plastic waste.
Malin:
So, it was like an effect of plastic pollution in Europe or like widespread.
Frida:
Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Malin:
So, then looking at business, if you were a business and you were affected by this SUP Directive, what would be your long-term ban game plan if you would have one?
Frida:
I guess, I would get rid of all the plastics as soon as possible, and of course, by getting rid of, I mean recycle the plastics into something hopefully more useful than single-use plastics. I would really go through my business and take a look at what products I got and start thinking of why I got them in my business. What added value does the business gain from using these products? Do we really need all these plastic products? Are they necessary for my business? Can the business cope without them? In that case, how?
Frida:
If the products are needed, we would have to start to look at other materials to replace plastic products and what other materials are more sustainable in the long run. We would also have to make sure that the business does just not exchange one material for another and look at our other solutions like reusable products instead of single-use products, and work out how a system like this could actually work for my business. If the business handled this right together with other businesses, the challenge could be solved, and we could actually contribute to changing customers' behaviour and reduce plastics. I think I would actually put some effort into this and not do a quick fix because I think the world has had enough of quick fixes and waste.
Malin:
Yeah. Then, I think I heard you saying that you would also look at other businesses, maybe even like collaborate with them and to see how to fix it together. So, you wouldn't ... I'm assuming that you wouldn't go, if you were a business, you wouldn't try to solve it by your own.
Frida:
No, I think that's kind of hard to do alone. I think we have to do it together.
Malin:
Yeah, but then if you are a business not really affected by this but you may have some single-use plastic products and packaging down your product line somehow, what would you do?
Frida:
I would really see this as a wake-up call and start to ask myself and my business a lot of questions. I think it's the perfect time to go through the business and really look into what kind of products we got and why we got them. Are the products there because they always been there, or is the business really depending on these products? Are the products sustainable? If not, can we switch to another more sustainable product? In order for the business to last in the long run, we need to make active choices and stay updated, for example, with the Ocean Alliance where issues like this are being discussed together with other companies.
Malin:
So, then like the first steps on whether you would be a business directly affected by the Single-use Plastic Directive or not yet, you would still take the first steps on looking at what you got within your product line operations.
Frida:
Yeah, absolutely. I think this is the beginning of a big change, so this is just a start.
Jane:
So, this was a discussion about the need to move away from short-term solutions, targets and trade-offs to long-term game plans.
Malin:
Yeah. We need to stop thinking, no, no, no, that's not my business to start thinking now, now, now, that's so my action.
Jane:
Of course, it's not like we haven't been working on this before, but the difference is that time is running, and we got a lot left to be done.
Malin:
Looking at plastics, material recycling in Sweden is less than 10%. That means that we cannot rely on recycling only. We have to do so much more before we even get to the recycling stage.
Jane:
Yeah. As Frida said, we have to rethink and redesign for a circular plastics economy, something that we have been talking about already in the episode Two Rs, and we'll continue to talk about in our coming episode, Recycling Unknown.
Malin:
Yep. So, Jane, Frida almost mentioned a long to-do list in the interview.
Jane:
Yeah. As we were listening in to this, we came up with a plastic awareness assessment like a rapid check, and as the theme of the Ocean Alliance and the podcast is, the ocean, we gave it the name Rapid Squid Check.
Malin:
Yep. That's right. So, we call on all listeners to try the Rapid Squid Check and to share your comments with us by sending an email to oceanalliance@hsr.se, and you'll find the Rapid Squid Check in the toolbox over at hsr.se/oceanalliance, or just click on the link in our show notes.