Staramaki

SDG 1 - NO POVERTY (odprava revščine), SDG 5 - GENDER EQUALITY (enakost spolov), SDG 8 - DECENT WORK AND ECONOMIC GROWTH (dostojno delo in gospodarska rast), SDG 9 - INDUSTRY, INNOVATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE (industrija, inovacije in infrastruktura), SDG 10 - REDUCED INEQUALITY (zmanjšanje neenakosti), SDG 12 - RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION (odgovorna poraba in proizvodnja), SDG 13 - CLIMATE ACTION (podnebni ukrepi), SDG 14 - LIFE BELOW WATER (življenje v vodi), SDG 15 - LIFE ON LAND (življenje na kopnem), SDG 17 - PARTNERSHIPS FOR THE GOALS (partnerstva za doseganje ciljev)

The social challenge that we are facing is the elimination of plastic  off our planet. We want to replace the plastic straws with natural ones that are nurturing the Earth instead of destroying it. So we are producing a natural straw made from the stem of the wheat, without using extra energy to make it (it grows by itself and is almost ready to be used). We produce it localy, using local raw material and local suppliers to eliminate the environmental footprint. We also create new job position including vulnarable people. We have zero waste in our production process as we use our remainder for horse bedding which we use afterwards to fertilise our fields. It's an innovative activity because it's a new field and we had to do it all from scratch. There wasn't somebody who could give us the know-how, there weren't any machines to accelerate the production, we had to find the right seeds, ecc.

So, our intention was towards the environmental protection but as we are a SCE we wanted to have social impact in sectors such as the discrimination, labour conditions, circular economy, ecc.

Εspecially in  Greece where every summer billions of plastic straws are used to drink cold coffee - and they often end up in the sea- we considered it imperative to replace them with another more environmentally friendly product.

1. We are tryimg to increase our positive impact regarding the environment and nature in many different ways. We are communicating the benefits of our product in comparison with other existing straws (for single use) trying to eliminate once and for all  the plastic ones.. We aim to limit the environmental degradation (72%). We help to capture carbon dioxide by increasing our fields. We make reasonable consumption of energy and we create no waste during  our production process. We also create compost to nurture the soil.

The goals that we are trying to achieve is to create our own energy  installing solar panels and re-use / recycle the water that we use. We also plan to repeat our paradigm in other regions eithr doing it on our own or giving the know-how to other teams that are interesting to do the same.

2. We live in a town with very high levels of unemployment, so every year we want to increase the job positions in our company. We also live close to the border from where thousands of refugees are passing. So, from the very begining we have inluded refugees(who would like to stay in Greece) and long term  unemployed people to our team. We adhere to the ratio for gender equality in the workplace  and we have equal salaries for all our employees. 

3. We have already had a communication with WWF Greece about our mission to fight plastic and some calls have been made with our President. We collaborate with Nestle which have helped us to become more known to the public ( they were looking for a straw that doesn't soak for their cold coffee and they had really  admired  our product) We also collaborate with a Japanese company which is doing what we do in Japan, and we exchange knowlidge out of competition.

4.Our challenge is limited to plastic straws only (not other plastic objects) but we wanted to do this in terms of social economy so to create more impact and also change way that we are working focusing on high values such as democracy, equity, solidarity, ecc. About the palstic straws I would say that the law  has been in force since 2021 in Greece, but unfortunately it is not fully implemented because there is no control by the authorities, with the result that many cafes still have plastic straws available.  Αs for the challenge of working in terms of social economy in Greece, I would say that it turned out to be extremely difficult as the government does not support the social economy, the intended national fund for similar enterprises has not even been created, and in general the social cooperative enterprise is an unknown model yet even for banks.