Sustainability – Fuzzy marketing terms or influential actions?
June 9, 2025By Jaakko Niukkala, TT Gaskets
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Sustainability is a buzz word that easily gets thrown around these days, and it’s difficult to tell greenwashing and actions apart. All sorts of snake oil are sold as sustainable because it’s trendy and attractive. The word sustainable is derived from ‘sustain’ meaning to maintain and keep in existence. And in most cases the fuzzy marketing terms are used to sustain the sales, not the planet or people.
Planet is doing fine, life is in danger The unpleasant truth is that barely anything in our current economy is sustainable and planetary boundaries1 are exceeded across the board. Despite all the hassle in current politics and more ‘urgent’ problems being solved, luckily people are gradually waking up to the issue. The clock is ticking for business as usual and staying in the comfort zone method as the people in charge realize that there’s no business to be done on an inhabitable planet.
Gradual change through measurable steps We all know that changing everything overnight isn’t possible, but we need to start from somewhere. The current society wasn’t built overnight so it will take time to reach the targets and change the paradigm. Once again, we at TT Gaskets have already done our fair share of target reaching and paradigm change but are just getting started. The first and foremost target we reached was carbon neutrality for scopes2 1 and 2 in the beginning of the year 2025. And this was achieved without any compensation as we like to do things the right way instead of the easy way. The scope 3 emissions have unfortunately the biggest impact on our business, but we haven’t settled on the status quo. The work continues tirelessly with our suppliers, customers and other stakeholders to find ways to become better with less burden on the environment and people.
Co-operation is key for success One of the best examples of co-operation between us and our customers is the Green Delivery3 that we have developed for the past 2 years. The target of the project is to remove all single-use plastic and wood from our packages and parcels and replace them with cardboard to reduce emissions, simplify handling and recycling. The most effective method is to replace the wooden pallet with a cardboard one which reduces the weight by up to 20 kgs. For us this has a big impact as our products typically weigh tens of grams. And for those wondering about the endurance of the cardboard pallet, on our pilot delivery, the freight forwarder put a wooden pallet under the cardboard one and the wooden one broke during the transport, but the cardboard pallet remained intact. The co-operation naturally continues through the development of our products, processes and people to fit the needs of the near future. We are currently heavily involved in the R&D of energy transition applications, e.g. hydrogen electrolyzers and future fuel engines, not to mention the Smart Gasket and reduction of PFAS materials. All of these have a potential to push the boundaries and revolutionize our society for a truly sustainable future. If you’d like to know more about our sustainability actions, you can do so by exploring our VSME sustainability report4 and by following us on our newsletter or LinkedIn. Finally, we want to welcome you to join us as the warden of our time on the journey towards a Smarter, Greener and Safer Tomorrow.
