Yleinen

Research for societal impact – What does it mean to researchers?

Author: Anna Leinonen/ VTT How can research fulfil such challenging purposes as creating great societal impact or developing solutions to extremely complex and systemic grand challenges? Moreover, what are the implications of such aspirations to the understanding of the researcher’s role, if innovation and high-quality research are not the only expectations of research output? Above …

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Incremental actions for transformative outcomes?

Exploring Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) brand owner strategies for a sustainable plastics economy Authors: Pyry Päivölä & Jaakko Siltaloppi (Aalto) Today, approximately 25% of all plastics produced are used in packaging, which amounts to a nearly 100 million tonnes annually. The majority of plastics packaging is used in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry. …

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Kohti kestävää muoviekosysteemiä

Systeeminen muutos kohti muovin kestävää valmistusta ja käyttöä edellyttää uudentyyppisten materiaaliratkaisujen kehittämistä sekä arvoverkoston roolien uudistamista. Uusien ratkaisujen syntymistä voidaan tukea varmistamalla, että yhteiskunnallinen ja taloudellinen ohjaus tukevat toinen toisiaan. Systeemisiä ongelmia ratkaistaan kokeilemalla, vuorovaikutuksella ja epävarmuutta paremmin ymmärtämällä, siksi tarvitaan ekosysteemitason tarkastelua muutoksen ajureista. ValueBioMat projektin tutkijat Jaakko Siltaloppi Aalto-yliopistosta ja Markus Jähi VTT:ltä …

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Data collection for life-cycle assessments in project ValueBioMat

Authors: Frans Silvenius, Marjatta Vahvaselkä and Hannu Ilvesniemi / Luke When performing a life-cycle assessment (LCA), data is collected from all relevant parts of different production systems related to the whole value chain covering the raw material, manufacturing, transport and waste management phases. This essential and time-consuming task can be done by using different data …

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Circularity of Plastics: experts’ dialogue on sustainable innovations

Authors: Jukka Seppälä, Aalto & Katri Valkokari, VTT Circularity of plastics is by definition a systemic challenge that requires dialogue between multidisciplinary experts in order to build solutions and understand development paths. Our research webinar covered the topic through three complementary thematic sessions. The first session started by looking at the challenge from the big …

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Plastics and Current Legislative Developments – Some Insights

Authors: Rosa Maria Ballardini, Juha Vesala and Corinna Casi / University of Lapland The European Union is currently seeking to tackle the environmental issues that relate to plastics. The measures targeting or affecting plastics include particularly the Single-Use Plastics Directive (2019/904) that is due to implemented in EU Member States by 3 July 2021. EU …

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Additive manufacturing technologies –productivity and process innovation on a sustainable basis?

Authors: Niklas Kretzschmar, Sergei Chekurov and Jouni Partanen / Aalto University Even though additive manufacturing (AM), also known as industrial 3D printing, is already there for some decades facilitating the manufacture of new design variations and legacy parts, it is still considered as a set of new production technologies. For numerous technical reasons, AM hasn’t …

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Identifying policy-level instruments required for a more sustainable plastic future

Authors: Katri Valkokari , Peter Ylen (VTT) & Rosa Ballardini and Juha Vesala (University of Lapland) A transition towards renewable and circular plastic ecosystems is a systemic challenge. In this regard, there is an obvious need to find the appropriate bundle of policy measures, incentives and regulation instruments to enhance the transition to a sustainable and …

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grass, frost, winter

Building a business case for renewable plastics innovation among material producers

Authors: Satu Salminen, Jaakko Siltaloppi / Aalto University The transition from fossil-based to bio- and circular economy is emerging as one of the major necessary societal transitions of the coming decades. While bio-based and recycled plastics are increasingly perceived as opening future business opportunities, as we have identified in the ValueBioMat project, in practice only …

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