Smart & Clean and their key partners have committed to a “closed plastic circle” goal for the Helsinki region and Lahti. Related to this goal Smart & Clean needed support in developing a data model as a tool for plastic ecosystem players.
Smart & Clean was a world-leading community-building impactful climate solution for systemic challenges. The foundation’s five-year operating period ended on 30th June 2021.
It is difficult to define and realize meaningful changes in the public-private ecosystem environment. If the required changes and their impacts are poorly understood, there is a risk of misplaced efforts. The problem is, as so often, human intuition. We tend to focus our efforts on the things we’ve seen or read about, disregarding the real numbers or the big picture. This is especially easy in those cases where we do not have any reliable numbers or are not able to understand the big picture.
This is where data and modeling offer a solution. In order to create a tangible change in the Helsinki metropolitan area plastics ecosystem, Taival created a dynamic model to estimate the overall volumes of packaging plastic across all parts of the operational ecosystem, from raw material import to collection and recycling. The objective of the model is to be able to explicitly demonstrate what actions are needed across the ecosystem in order to realize the EU objective of 50 percent packaging plastic circulation by 2025.
By defining, modeling, and simplifying the complexity of the circular ecosystems we can make public sector parties, companies and consumers believe in them and find their active roles in ecosystems. This enables the ecosystem to be led in making a systemic change.