Presentation by Marco Lucisano, RISE Bioeconomy, Vice President Papermaking and Packaging, at the Swedish conference "Livsmedelsförpackningar i fokus", Stockholm, April 27th, 2017.

1. Research Institutes of Sweden
CONSUMER PERCEPTIONS,
CURRENT TRENDS AND
THE ROLE OF MATERIALS IN
A BIO-BASED ECONOMY
Marco Lucisano,
Vice President, Papermaking & Packaging
RISE Bioeconomy
This is a copy of a presentation at the Swedish
conference Livsmedelsförpackningar i fokus,
Stockholm, April 27th 2017. We have added speech
bubbles to guide you through the slides.
Please feel free to contact me if you have questions
or comments: marco.Lucisano@ri.se

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Since this is a presentation about the future,
one could assume that we are trying to
describe a vision for the future, or maybe a
forecast. Naturally, both visions and forecast
are interesting, yet neither forms the base of
our way of working with foresight work.

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To us, studying the future is like training to drive a car in a foggy day. When you do it,
you rely on your experience of interpreting signs and signals. Indeed traffic signs are
designed so that we can understand their meaning even when we just can see their
shape.
When you have trained and you manage to react quickly to what happens around
you, then you can drive home safely. Or, leaving the world of analogies, steer your
company to a successful future.

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Global
trends
Scientifically
possible
Our Global Outlooks describe interesting intersections between global trends in business and society and
scientific and technical developments which are now reaching the tipping point to implementation.
This presentation is based on our latest study “A
Cellulose-Based Society”, a study of trends and
drivers influencing the development of new
materials in a circular bio-based economy.

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Innventia International Consumer Survey
One of the sources of information for our latest study, A Cellulose-
Based Society is an international consumer survey we performed in
five countries (Sweden, Germany, the United States, Brazil and
China) in late January and early February 2016.
In each of the five countries we collected answers from 500 people,
targeting the urban digitally-savvy middle classes. We asked
questions about choices in life, attitudes and connection with the
materials we encounter in everyday life.

6. How worried are you about… environmental issues?
6
We asked a large number of questions about general attitudes, among others towards the
environment. Percent “very worried” above the axis, “not worried” at all below. Average of four
environmental concerns: Natural disasters, global warming, resource shortage and deforestation.

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Who is responsible for the environment?
It is interesting to observe that there is only one
group for which we have high level of trust and
ascribe a high level of responsibility: ordinary
people, that is everyone of us, individually.

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How do we make the world a better place?

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Give us more efficient recycling systems!
We asked which measures society should take to make the world more sustainable.
The most common answer was to set in operation more efficient recycling systems and
the second most common option was to force companies to recycle to a greater degree.
This suggest that there is a bias among the urban citizens in the direction of recycling.
This is absolutely not a negative trait, but rather a very common association.

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≠
The bias for recycling is particularly important in light of
the ongoing development towards a circular economy.
We need to make sure to distinguish between recycling,
albeit enhanced, and full circularity.

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We asked respondents a large number of
questions about materials: are we aware, do we
actively discriminate between different
alternatives?

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Reliable and exclusive?
In this graph we summarize a number of attributes
on two axes, one related to reliability and one to
exclusivity.

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Reliable and exclusive?
Looking at how an ideal material is classified, we
see that natural materials and wood are excusive
enough although not quite as reliable as they would
need to be.

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Biobased not as good as natural materials!
Researchers, both in the industry and in academic
environments work actively to develop new and
innovative biobased materials. Yet, respondents in
our survey did not rank biobased alternatives
favourably.

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Econsumers like biobased!
Since we have metadata about respondents, we can isolate
the answers of those who are more interested or
knowledgeable, a group we called Econsumers. Econsumers
see biobased materials as very similar in attributes to natural
material. This shows the need of open and transparent
education of consumers, taking them along a journey of
learning and involvement.

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A Cellulose-Based Society describes eight trends which are
important for the development of new sustainable materials
towards a circular biobased economy. Here I have selected
three of the trends.

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The City Norm
Urbanisation is more to be regarded as a fact than as a trend.
Urbanisation generates a number of consequences and
opportunities which have the connotation of trends. Let’s have
a look at one of them.

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The country of Sweden and the city of New York have one thing in common:
the size of their population. This means that the concentration of people and
materials is much higher in New York than in the entire Sweden. Can we see
this as a key enabler for innovative materials solutions for food packaging?

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Here we see one modern urban phenomenon: home delivery
of ready food. I have ordered a significant number of
alternatives to perform a non-scientific study of the packaging
solutions used.

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80% recycled material
PLA
Moulded pulp
Unknown
plastic
Al Paper
This is one example from my empirical study: is it really the
best solution to ask consumers to handle six different
materials? What are we supposed to do with the packaging we
get home with food deliveries?

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The likely answer, at least for the
people of Stockholm, is to sort
different materials and take them to
the nearest recycling station, this one
for example. Remember the urban
citizens’ bias for recycling?
If this is the end-of-life of our
packaging, it is not difficult to
understand why it is still common for
people to associate packaging with
waste instead of seeing its value,
functionality and performance.

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No more plane Janes and average Joes
“No More Plain Janes and Average Joes” portrays a development in which an increasingly
heterogeneous mass market splits into a myriad of fast-moving niches, and where the
“average consumer” as the target group is irrelevant. This means that the need for
specialisation and branding will be increasingly important to achieve success.

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Business activism
“Business Activism” illustrates a trend
in which companies, on both
business and ethical grounds, start to
take an increasingly active role in the
pursuit of a sustainable world. This
has a particularly large impact at a
time when both politicians and
consumers are perplexed and
disagree about the challenge of
leading development in a positive
direction.

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Phasing out shopping plastic bags is part of our wider
effort to constantly increase the use of more sustainable
materials in our production, products and stores…

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The demonstration economy
The main conclusion of our study is that the successful organisations and companies of tomorrow need to
build skills that go beyond thinking through promising ideas and concepts – many people will be
increasingly good at that in the future. The truly successful organisations will be those that also have the
ability to demonstrate these ideas and concepts in reality. The force for change, as well as the success, that
can be created by the ability to demonstrate solutions that can actually be seen, touched and experienced
can currently be exemplified in organisations such as Uber, Airbnb, Tesla, SpaceX and Khan Academy –
organisations that have all changed the perception of what is possible and desirable, and shaped the reality
around them.

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Order your copy of A Cellulose-Based Society: www.Innventia.com/cbs

27. Research Institutes of Sweden
Marco Lucisano,
Vice President, Papermaking & Packaging
RISE Bioeconomy