Proactivity and sustainable transition at the fish counter? : A study about ecological sustainability regarding fish at four ICA Kvantum supermarkets within the Stockholm region

Sammanfattning: Fish and shellfish are important sources of protein for the world population. Nearly 50 percent of fish and shellfish products originate from aquaculture, and the rest comes from traditional fishing. The marine stocks are under threat from unsustainable fishing practices. Together with fishing, aquaculture constitutes extra stress on the marine stocks and ecosystems. Aquaculture also causes other environmental side effects. International trade rules do not sufficiently take care of the ecological problems. Voluntary initiatives, like ecolabels, are one way of dealing with the problems. This thesis does an attempt to, from an environmental science perspective, analyze how the fish counters at four ICA Kvantum stores in the Stockholm region work with ecological sustainability issues with regards to fish and shellfish. The overall purpose is to examine the shops’ historical, current and potential future work and to analyze if the work is conducted in a proactive, reactive or in a passive way. The main findings include that the knowledge, sustainability statuses, responsiveness, and changes in time, and the intentions or plans for the future differed a lot between the different shops. Furthermore, many of the investigated potential problem areas seemed to constitute problems in practice. Additionally, it seemed like additional pressure may be needed if the aggregated ecological status should be raised. The research method consisted of case studies with semistructured qualitative interviews and analysis of corporate documents, and a minor quantitative investigation of the frozen assortment at the stores.