The Swedish EPA’s roadmap for the sustainable use of plastics : Inspiring action

The roadmap in short The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s roadmap provides an overall picture and a guide for where we are going and what we mean by sustainable use of plastics. It is intended to create a unified understanding of what changes are needed and which areas for development are particularly important to work with. The roadmap should also inspire others to act. The roadmap is based on existing legislation, strategies, and goals nationally, in the EU and globally. Decision-makers in both the private and public sectors should be able to use the roadmap to support deciding what path to take, as a basis for strategic work and, even more practically, how to contribute. The roadmap also provides options for combining forces and collaborating on issues that individual organisations cannot solve alone. Sustainable plastic use means using plastics in the right place and in resource-efficient, climate-efficient, non-toxic and circular flows with negligible leakage. To achieve this, efforts are needed in four impact areas: raw materials and production with minimal environmental impact; resource-smart use; reduced leakage of plastics to nature; and greatly expanded and high-quality material recycling. Each area describes which changes are needed to achieve the objectives and which indicators will be used for follow-up. For these changes to occur, many areas need development. The illustration shows prioritised development areas. The three development areas in the middle constitute an overlapping knowledge base. Development areas in yellow link to the “Resource-smart use” impact area, blue to “Reduce leakage”, green to “Raw material and production with minimal environmental impact” and light blue to “Sharply increased and high-quality material recycling”. Plastics are on the agenda with a lot happening in the field. The roadmap is expected to serve as a guide until 2025, after which it will need to be reassessed