Q&A with Håkan Nordin from Bolon

Håkan Nordin is Head of Sustainability at Swedish vinyl flooring company BOLON. He has been working professionally on environmental issues since 1984 and has great insight and knowledge about sustainability and climate issues for companies and public organizations.

Håkan has held roles as campaign manager and board member at Greenpeace Sweden and policy adviser for Greenpeace International as well as consultancy roles for various delegations and committees for the Swedish government. He has also advised several companies including H&M and Ikea on sustainability issues.

Håkan joined Aritco’s panel discussion on sustainability during Stockholm Design Week – here’s a taster of his views on one of the most pressing issues of our time.

A: We aim to halve the climate impact of our value chain to end of use by 2030. We are also planning to make 50 percent of materials circular across all our products by 2030. We would like to increase the lifespan of BOLON flooring from around 15 years to 30 years, and we may even look at leasing it so we have control of the end of life of the product to make sure it is properly recycled.

A: There is lots of investment and innovation emerging to tackle net zero – green energy, solar panels, electric vehicles – but the development of the circular economy is much weaker. Transportation and distribution are often seen as a major issue, but this only account for 5-10% of a product’s carbon footprint – materials account for about 80%. Net zero and circularity are linked together.

A: We need a better recycling infrastructure. Even in Sweden, 90% of plastic is incinerated and this accounts for 6% of all the country’s emissions. Businesses need to extend their value chains to used products as well as new and this has only just started. We need to invest in the refurbishing and resale industry.