Buns, Melina Antonia. “An Environmental Escape from European Integration: Scandinavian Environmental Activism and Economic Protectionism against Disposable Bottles, 1960s to 1988.” European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 1–2 (2025).
As single-use packaging spotted shelves of modern supermarkets and ‘untouched’ nature in the 1960s, information campaigns and clean-up events popped up across Scandinavia to counter the accumulating littering. Whereas disposable beverage containers promised to tear down trade barriers and increase international market competition, critics of this development considered the disposable bottle the epitome of the growth premises of European integration. This article uses the disposable bottle as a lens through which to study how social actors in Scandinavia have engaged with and challenged European integration at the tension between environmental and economic interests. Focusing on the triangle of nature protection organizations, industrial interest organizations and politicians in Scandinavia, the article provides a social perspective on European integration at and from the region’s margins. Shedding light on the conflicting interests between international trade competition, market access and environmental protection, it demonstrates how social and political actors instrumentalized environmental arguments on disposable packaging for economic protection. (Abstract)
© 2024 Melina Antonia Buns. This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
