Ripples to waves
Authors:   , Dijkstra Hanna 
Published: August 2023

Plastic pollution is a societal challenge that has gained global attention and become an urgent policy priority. Images of entangled marine life and heavily polluted beaches have come to symbolize the current system, characterized by an overdependence on plastic and mismanagement of waste. To become sustainable, a fundamental restructuring of the plastic production and consumption system is needed, including government regulations, changing consumer behaviors and innovative business practices. This thesis focuses on the latter, investigating how entrepreneurs and companies deploying sustainable business models focused on plastic can contribute to a sustainability transition.

The first study reviews the academic and theoretical landscape of studies on sustainable plastic management business models. The results reveal that academic attention on the topic of sustainable plastic business modeling is growing, but there is inconsistency with how business models are defined and cataloged.

Next, a market study of companies working specifically on the challenge of marine plastic is conducted. The study confirms that small businesses are successfully commercializing goods and services to reduce the damage of plastics to the marine environment through innovative business models. However, efforts to manage marine plastic are still underdeveloped in many areas, including microplastic management and monitoring, and little is known about the entrepreneurial experience of working in this field.

Subsequently, in-depth qualitative interviews with entrepreneurs working on marine plastic management were conducted to better understand the experience and details of their business models. The study proposes four business model categories that have unique and shared drivers and barriers. The results demonstrate that new ventures working in this field deploy different strategies, face distinct challenges and have varying motivations for their work.

The thesis then broadens scope to assess how sustainable entrepreneurs contribute to sustainability transitions. This research project involved an online survey of sustainable plastic businesses and found that the respondents are actively working to shape the systems they operate in and use different strategies to do so. Further, respondents that consider their company necessary and contributing to a sustainability transition were more likely to engage in system-shaping activities.

The main objective of this thesis was to improve the understanding of the global emergence and development of sustainable business models for plastic management and how this can lead to systemic changes. The results demonstrate that there is a myriad of business models available for ventures who want to work on sustainable plastic or marine plastic management, but that creative revenue models, focusing on higher waste hierarchy levels and adopting a systemic perspective can help these companies achieve larger impact. Future research can build on this thesis and track the dynamics of the sustainable plastics transition considering a wider group of stakeholders and perspectives, such as the circular economy and alternative economic paradigms. We conclude that sustainable ventures play a crucial role in the plastic transition and that this transition will influence venture development in return.