Swedish trade leads the way - sustainable consumption is the future of our competitiveness

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

"Sustainable trade and consumption, is it possible? We think so. The trade sector is a Swedish area of strength that is known worldwide for innovative, sustainable and smart goods and services. With this project, we want to show how Swedish trade and consumption can become more sustainable", says Josephine Darlington, ASTER.

Now Vinnova, the Swedish Energy Agency and FORMAS are investing in the future's Impact Innovation-program, which will start in 2024. We are happy to share that the preparatory project The futures sustainable trade and consumption has been granted funding. The team behind the project is Svensk Handel, SKR, Lyko, Life, Riksteatern, Mistra Sustainable Consumption, Postnord, Dagab and Sveriges konsumenter where the work is led by ASTER together with Johanneberg Science Park.

We will be running a number of workshops from April to August, where we encourage everyone who works with, in and in relation to any type of trade to get involved. We need everyone's experience and knowledge, property owners, traders in all categories, consumer organisations, producers, logistics operators, etc. So get in touch if you want to join!

Daniel Hellström, Lund University and ASTER

"In order to bring about a change, broad cooperation is required between the actors who have an influence on the conditions of trade and how it is conducted. Consumers must also be involved and change their behavior as well. However, it is not enough to add more sustainable goods and services to the system and expect well-informed consumers to suddenly change their mind, basic structures that support sustainable consumption must be put in place", says Göran Finnveden, Mistra Sustainable Consumption.

The result we jointly want to achieve is at least five clear goals in an action plan for Sweden to lead the way and demonstrate what sustainable trade and consumption are. Together with this action plan, an actor map will be created that shows who needs to be involved to achieve the goals. The result will also show how Sweden's trade system creates the conditions for sustainable consumption, what is missing and what we can learn from each other both nationally and internationally.