Skroten Café and Skeppshandel located in the shipyard Nya Djurgårdsvarvet, impresses not only with a cozy café and nice things for sale. Their great responsibility for the marine environment reaches far beyond both Djurgården’s and Stockholm’s waters. “Skroten” performs national environmental work! Read below about two inspiring initiatives based on entrepreneurship, environmental awareness, and collaborations.
The solution to their own problem became national environmental work
From the office on top of the café, the owners, Maria Rindstam and Josefin Arrhénborg also run Sweden’s first boat scrap! The idea was raised in 2007 when they themselves had a sailboat that they needed to get rid of. No one could arrange it in an environmentally safe way, and later that year the boat scrap, Båtskroten, was started on Muskö in the Stockholm archipelago. Boats should bounce on the blue waves and then, when it’s time, be taken care of so that they do not lie around and litter in nature or on the bottom of the sea. Everything from small boats to large ships is scrapped here. Together with SweBoat and Stena Recycling, Båtskroten has created the collaboration platform Båtretur to facilitate boat recycling throughout the country.
Fiskereturen collects used fishing gear
In 2019, together with the municipality of Sotenäs, Keep Sweden Clean and Fiskareföreningen Norden (the Nordic Fishermen’s Association), they came up with Fiskereturen, meaning Fishing return in Swedish. Fiskereturen also conducts environmental work on a national level. A collection service that, with support from the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management, receives and takes care of used fishing gear. According to Keep Sweden Clean, as much as 27% of the plastic in our seas consists of lost fishing gear. Plastic threatens marine life in two ways. Both by the animals in the sea, getting stuck in plastic rubbish, or by the animals confusing plastic with food. Their stomachs are filled with plastic that they cannot break down, and in many cases it leads to the animals starving to death. Fiskereturen conducts preventive work that effectively stops fishing gear from ending up in the wrong place. Since the start, Fiskereturen has collected about 290 tonnes of fishing gear. Well done, we say!
Did you know that…?
Ghost nets are a term for lost fishing nets and trawls left in seas and lakes. These continue to catch fish unnecessarily for a long time, meaning that the fish are subjected to cruel and unnecessary suffering. Cages, tins and other types of so-called confinement tools can also be turned into ghost tools if they are left in the sea and lakes.
Both Båtskroten and Fiskereturen are important initiatives to reduce litter in the oceans (14.1)
Collaborations are important for Skroten’s work to reach a national level (17.17)
