Sustainability is today a controversial topic where both companies and customers are concerned with succeeding in the three dimensions of sustainability: economic, social and environmental. It is a challenge to create a business where these three aspects are in balance, making it necessary for companies to use a business model to achieve this. The application of the business model is based on helping companies look at its function in order to more easily adjust its design in an attempt to create a greater value proposition. The design and usability of the business model can take different forms, with the more traditional business model aiming at economic sustainability while the sustainable business model aims to make the three dimensions of sustainability interact.

Packaging companies are particularly familiar with the concept of sustainability given that a significant portion of their production and consumption is derived from the forest. The central focus of many packaging firms is to reuse and recycle their products in an environmentally responsible manner that does not harm the climate. The problem here may be reflected in the difficulty of combining the profit motive with the social and environmental aspects, which is why the study was carried out. All companies want to combine the three sustainability perspectives in their business model, but the critical point is how well they succeed and what is most important in designing a sustainable business model. The risk with an increase in the sustainable perspective is often that companies distinguish themselves as more sustainable than they are. This increases the interest in investigating how companies that actively work with sustainability work to combine an economic, social and environmental sustainability focus. 

To be able to investigate how companies work to achieve a sustainable business model were interviews conducted with seven respondents from four different packaging companies. In combination with the chosen theories and the primary data provided by the interviews, conclusions could be extracted to best provide an insight into how a sustainable business model can be designed. The study indicated that social and environmental sustainability is dependent on economic sustainability as a company's social and environmental work is based on the company's survival. Similarly, the social and environmental work can serve the company, which thereby becomes a more attractive competitor on the market. Finally, it is possible to interpret that sustainability and economic longevity have a connection in the packaging industry where it is profitable to be sustainable.