Last week the leaked IPCC’s draft report (due to be published 2022) warns us of accelerating climate devastation and paints a distressing picture of how climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades. The global average temperature has already reached 1,1°C above the pre-industrial period, and on current trends, we’re heading for 3°C at best. As Nicholas Stern, former chief economist at the World Bank and author of the landmark Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change put it: “The world is confronting a complex set of interwoven challenges, and unless we tackle them together, we are not going to do very well on any of them”.

We are halfway through Smart & Clean Foundation’s fifth and final year. Since 2016 we have been working hard to create climate solutions together with the Helsinki metropolitan cities, companies, universities, R&D; institutions, and the Finnish state.

Jorma Mikkonen is the Director of Corporate Relations and Responsibility at Lassila & Tikanoja plc, which is turning the circular economy into reality. He is also a member of the Closed Plastic Circle Project’s Task Force.