The beginning of February 2024 marked a new chapter for the “Enablers for green transition” initiative in the SPIRIT programme as Sanna Martin stepped into the leadership role following the retirement of Auli Nummila-Pakarinen.
Joining the SPIRIT programme is a dream come true to Sanna
With a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Otaniemi, Sanna Martin’s working life began in process engineering roles. She got an opportunity to work with Borealis’s Borstar® process design and hence got a flavour of plastics production. In 2000, this experience led her to Borealis, where she immersed herself in process and operations knowledge, and advanced to product quality development and trial runs, bringing her closer to the end products.
Sanna became a Product Owner, moving closer to customer interfaces, being responsible for the quality and standards compliance of pipe products produced in Porvoo. She gathered experience from supply chain and order-to-cash process while managing customer service teams. Craving new challenges, Sanna began exploring roles in plastics circularity, encouraged by Auli Nummila-Pakarinen five years ago to follow the development of Circular Economy ISO standards, with the first standards now being released. During her sabbatical, Sanna studied Energy and Environmental technology at Aalto University and Multidisciplinary environmental science programme at the University of Helsinki, fuelling her ambition to shift from fossil-based business to a sustainable circular economy. Returning to Product Expert role dealing with PP rigid packaging grades for Consumer Products and then stepping into Auli’s shoes at SPIRIT was the realization of a long-held dream, now incorporating meaningful topics in her daily work.
Boosting the circular economy of plastics with focus on a number of enablers
The R&D theme ”Enablers for green transition” focuses on facilitating the circular economy of plastics, to keep valuable plastic materials in use with shortest possible circulation loops. This involves collaboration with customers, value chain parties, authorities and researchers, influencing both policies and practices. This R&D theme also connects with other themes developing circular polyolefin solutions, aiming to bring these solutions to market. Choosing sustainably sourced bio-circular or circular raw materials should have high priority in product design, but if the product is not designed for recycling at the end of its life cycle, circular economy principles are not fulfilled. Also the intended recycling technology should be available in scale to avoid incineration and minimise usage of virgin resources.
Rethink and experiment!
Companies are encouraged to boldly rethink their business models and their product offerings. Sanna’s R&D theme aims to eliminate bottlenecks by promoting long-lasting, reusable products, avoiding single-use and incineration, and expanding into a broader palette of circular economy solutions. The focus includes design for recycling, enabling customers to make easily recyclable mono-material products, and design from recycling, which adds more loops to the system. Companies need to widen their thinking from linear to circular economy, for example recycling packaging waste back to packaging raw materials. SPIRIT ecosystem offers possibilities to bring different actors in the field together to test out new ideas and develop concrete circular solutions.
Great projects in the pipeline
High-quality polyethylenes and polypropylenes from Borealis are used in Energy, Automotive, HealthCare, Infrastructure and Consumer Products applications. Borealis’ own development Borstar® Nextension Technology drives plastics circularity. Main applications for the Nextension products currently under development are PP or PE monomaterial solutions aimed for replacing currently used multi-layer structures and fulfilling Design for Recycling requirements. In a large number of applications, these circular packaging designs may include non-fossil grades like those from the Bornewables™ portfolio of circular polyolefins manufactured with second generation renewable feedstock; or from the transformative Borcycle™ portfolios containing grades made of polyolefins-based, post-consumer recyclate.
Collaborations such as SULKI are great examples of out-of-the-box thinking with food contact packaging materials and creating a new circulation loop concept utilising the strength of value chain approach. It is very difficult to be circular all by yourself. Through sorting and product marking technology development, these initiatives have the potential to meet European standards for food contact materials, involving players across the value chain, from raw material (waste) collection to manufacturing, testing and end use. Recyclability can be also improved by utilising laser marking, which is covered in the Zero Ink project with promising outcomes, also improving traceability and digitalization throughout the value chain.
Next steps
As SPIRIT continues, Sanna envisions broad collaboration across the value chain, encouraging various players to contribute to a joint effort. There are unexplored possibilities in ideating, testing and implementing different circular economy resource management principles – such as reduce, rethink, reconsider source, reuse – in the way plastics are used today. In addition to private service providers, municipalities, for example, could participate in pilot projects integrating meal service food containers reuse systems and gain practical experiences. The focus is on reducing material consumption through life cycle assessment, aiming for genuine impact rather than greenwashing.
Sanna’s leadership in this R&D theme embodies the spirit of innovation and collaboration, driving forward the transition to a circular economy that not only benefits the environment but also creates sustainable business practices.