“The process of developing a new standard is very important, and the understandings reached can often be carried over in other fora”

Maria Gustafsson works as a project manager at the Swedish Institute for Standards, SIS.

Maria Gustafsson, project manager at the Swedish Institute for Standards, SIS, was asked to join STEPS board when the program started in 2016. She was happy to accept, since she believes that actors from different sectors and fields in society, not least standardisation and academia, should collaborate more closely to take steps leading to sustainable development.

– The Mistra research programmes can take big steps since they run over many years on a large budget and gather both researchers and industry. This is something very positive, says Maria Gustafsson.

Her work at SIS enables her to give important inputs to STEPS’ work in relation to how international standards can shape the plastic system.

She explains that standards are of crucial importance to ensure streamlining and implementation of new practices. They serve as strategic tools to enable business to operate efficiently, increase productivity, and access new markets. Standards also help companies develop products that can be used, disposed, and recycled in a similar fashion. As such, they are important to accelerate sustainable change and transformation.

Standards relating to plastics have been developed for many years

Standardisation related to plastics has been ongoing for many years and covers a wide range of topics such as material quality and durability, biodegradability, and recycling. Sweden is very active in this work; SIS has just now taken over the leadership of the European technical committee on Plastics and has led the international work related to mechanical recycling of plastics for several years.

Another important area for STEPS, and the reason Maria Gustafsson was asked to join STEPS board, is that the European Committee develops standards for biobased products. This work includes standards on terminology, biobased content, sustainability criteria, life cycle assessments, LCA, and communication. For the last year, she and a Swedish convenor have been leading the work to develop a European standard on how to compare biobased products with fossil-based products when doing LCA.

She explains that current methodology disadvantages bio-based materials and products in a number of ways, which was highlighted first by European Bioplastics and later the entire Bioeconomy Alliance. She highlights the example that even if the forestry or crop cultivation has rendered a net carbon sink, this is not included in the calculation as biomass feedstock is at best counted as zero. There are also much more stringent requirements put on the biobased value chain when it comes to issues such as traceability and data quality.

– These and several other issues create an unlevel playing field, which becomes even more problematic when you consider that in many cases the actors within the biobased industries are much smaller than the traditional, fossil-based industries. One important part of standardisation is to try to mitigate these kinds of gaps.

Standards can play a crucial role in supporting companies

While standards are voluntary in nature, unless they are referred to in legislation in a way that makes them binding, Maria Gustafsson strongly believes that this standard can play a crucial role in supporting e.g. companies and policymakers to make more informed choices in connection to the use of feedstock.

– I feel that part of the gain of developing a new standard is the fact that you get people to talk to each other. The process itself is very important and the understandings reached can often be carried over in other fora as well. Another aspect is that many companies want to make a positive change and see the value of being able to communicate to consumers and other customers about it. Here standards can be a useful tool.

What changes does she hope to see in the future in relation to plastics?

– Well, we have to realise that there is no silver bullet solution. Instead, there will be many different solutions that will have to be developed one step at a time. If we wait for a material or technique that is perfect from the beginning and that will solve all problems, we will keep on waiting and not achieve any change at all.

– What is important is to keep an open mind and to try many things at once. This is one of the benefits of the STEPS programme, that different pathways are investigated and developed side by side with research topics such as consumer and industry behaviour, which we need to understand better to achieve lasting change, says Maria Gustafsson.