The label is awarded to activities that benefit the environment by finding ways to produce, borrow and recycle items to support sustainable consumption in a sustainable society.
The label has been launched to promote sustainable consumption though recycling, sharing and repairing. The long-term goal is to reduce the amount of waste and to turn sustainable consumption into a good habit.
“The amount of waste is growing daily. Our consumption is using raw materials and energy at a furious rate. This can’t continue in the long-term. The purpose of the Miljönär label is to highlight initiatives promoting a more sustainable society,” Anna-Carin Gripwall, head of communications at Avfall Sverige.
Blocket is a prime example of an enterprise that is doing precisely that.
“Here in Blocket we’re passionate about recycling, and we think it’s a great idea of Avfall Sverige to highlight activities that both benefit our environment and save people money,” says Anna Backe, who is responsible for sustainability in Blocket.
“The motto we chose, ”Miljönär-vänlig (“miljönär” is a play on the words “environment” and “millionaire”) – Get rich by making, borrowing and recycling” conveys the message that you save the environment as well as money by being eco-friendly,” explains Anna-Carin Gripwall.
We recycle more than 99 percent of household waste into energy or new materials, but the problem is that we generate too much waste; on average of 460 kg waste per person annually in Sweden, which totals 4,400,000 tons of garbage. In the EU we throw away around 2.5 billion tons of waste every year![1] If we stacked it all up, it would measure five times the distance between the Earth and the moon.
Blocket asked the IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute to estimate how much CO2 the Swedish population saved by buying and selling via Blocket. The estimates show that we save 1.6 billion tons of CO2 every year by selling products second-hand. That is as much as we could save if the traffic throughout the country stood still for a whole month.
Find out more at http://miljönär.se and www.blocket.se/hallbarhetsarbete.