Innovation

Tingstad sustainability work is not really an innovation for the market, but an area where changes can have big impact on the final consumer.

Inspiration

Tingstad obviously has an overall plan of sustainable development. However, it turns out that this work takes place all the way from the leaders down to employees at the individual level. In Sweden we have a saying that goes "many streams small form a big river," the saying means that many small changes eventually become a big change. You can say that Tingstad is literally is living after this saying. They want to make a big change and do it by making small-scale changes at the beginning of the producer-consumer chain.

Overall impact

We were discussing how to make a difference on a large scale. In today's consumption society, it does not feel like you alone by choosing sustainable alternatives can make a difference. But by making small changes at the beginning of the chain, everyone will be affected. Tingstad provides companies across the Nordic region with the products they demand. Tingstad offers a wide range of products where a large part of them are more environmentally friendly alternatives than products made of fossil fuels. This enables the companies to choose how big environmental impact they want their business to be responsible for. Tingstad´s wide range of environmentally friendly products is constantly evolving, where Tingstad itself produces products that comply with the UN global goals for sustainable development.

Let us play with the idea that a company can affect 100 households for a better approach to sustainability. We say it's a restaurant that instead of using traditional plastic packaging for take away, choose to use a more environmentally friendly alternative to plastic such as bagasse. This itself means that Tingstad by selling packets of bagasse to 100 restaurants indirectly reaches 10,000 households and can have a greater impact on the environment than the individual restaurant.

Business benefit

Tingstad´s business concept is "to offer a wide range of affordable, qualitative products and solutions that simplify the working day of all those who do business, and they will do this with commitment, customer focus, and honesty." The business idea itself is not an innovation for the environment, but Maria Syversen points out that even in this case, the environment has been taken into consideration. Being able to offer the customers good affordable products is a topic of great concern for Tingstad. However, what should not be forgotten is that all customers are unique regardless of industry and to offer only, for example, the cheapest disposable products and the cleaning products to all customers is nothing they strive for. Being able to offer a good pricing with the customer's unique demand in mind is what the business idea aims at. Tingstad does not want it necessarily to be more expensive for a company to choose a more sustainable product, but instead, they want to encourage customers to pay attention to both the price and environment when they make a decision. One way Tingstad works to offer its customers more environmentally friendly products at a low price is by producing their own products. In this way, they can keep the price down by avoiding unnecessary intermediaries and they can control the product from production.

Social and environmental benefit

Tingstad´s sustainability work is well implemented in all parts of the company and Maria emphasizes not only to be a leader in its industry in terms of sustainability. With this in mind, she points out that Tingstad was among the first companies to ISO certify according to the new 14001 environmental standards. If you play with the thought what Tingstad could do differently to become even more environmentally friendly, the first thing we will be thinking about is the supply of products made of fossil fuels. One possible scenario is that Tingstad completely chooses to stop offering fossil fuel products for sustainable choices. However, we do not think this would have been a good idea, as Tingstad most likely would lose many customers who are not willing to pay a little more for a product that has the environment in mind. Implementing such an idea would also mean that Tingstad has abandoned its business concept "to offer a wide range of affordable, qualitative products and solutions that simplify the working day of all who do business and we will do this with commitment, customer focus, and honesty" which is the very reason why Tingstad is built.

When we asked Maria what the biggest challenge was when it comes to offering products classified as a more sustainable choice, she immediately stated that the biggest challenge today is being able to classify a product as environmentally friendly. Manufacturers of consumables have discovered in recent years that there is a high demand for non-fossil fuels products. However, it cannot be said that many of the new materials that will serve as substitutes for fossil fuel materials are more environmentally friendly. All materials which can be classified as a more sustainable choice has disadvantages that must be taken into consideration. It can be everything from disposable products made from palm leaves or bagasse where the raw materials used in the manufacturing process are spillage that otherwise would be wasted if nobody chose to make use of it. What to keep in mind, however, is that both palm leaves and sugar cane, which are required for bagasse, come from far away countries and shipping the raw material or the finished product to Sweden has a major impact on the environment. In many cases, when choosing which material to use to make disposable products, it becomes a matter of choosing the material that is least harmful to the environment as all materials affect the environment in some way.

Interview

Maria Syversen, Environmental & Quality Manager