Nordic Green News - 24 June, 2020

Coop emphasizes sustainability in its stores

Coop, one of Sweden’s largest supermarket chains, announced that it will make a major initiative in the labelling of its products. All of Coop's 17,000 foods will be labeled with a information showing the food’s performance against 10 criteria, including biodiversity, climate, pesticides and animal health. Charlotta Szczepanowski, Head of Sustainability and Quality at Coop said, “Each food is shown as a spider diagram where it is possible to see how the product affects the various criteria we have set up. For example, natural pasture management has a high climatic impact, but is good for biodiversity, as natural pastures need cows that graze and poop. We want customers to see the whole picture and make choices based on it.”

 

Sweden’s Green Party wants to finance circular economy

Sweden’s Greens, which govern the country together with the Social Democrats, want to include SEK 500 million of circular economy investments as part of the pandemic recovery program. The Minister of Climate and Environment, Isabella Lövin, said that “it should not be cheaper to buy new than to repair things. We should become better at managing the resources we have. Today, for example, it is very cheap to make new plastics from fossil raw materials. Here we want to see investments in innovative ways to make new plastics from plastic waste and other raw materials.”

 

Bildt makes political point about Green’s nuclear closures

Low wind conditions and electricity grid constraints have meant that Sweden’s old oil-fired power plant in Karlshamn has been brought into action in the midst of summer. Typically it runs just part of the time in winter, when demand is at its maximum. Former Moderate PM, Carl Bildt, took the opportunity to fire a shot, “Was that how the Greens wanted it when they shut down nuclear power?”

 

Swedish government proposal to tax biofuels criticized

The MDs of the Swedish Energy Company’s organization and Svebio, a biofuels lobby group criticized the government’s proposal to tax certain biofuels for heat generation. Arguing that it was perverse for Sweden to be trying to become the world’s first GHG neutral economy and then tax biofuels, the MDs say that Sweden should ask the EU to extend the permission for tax exemptions.

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