Europe's 'greenest city' tests limits of sustainable living

Google – AFP, Tom Sullivan (AFP), 24 January 2014

An environmentally smart house belonging to Jeanette and Ryan Provencher

in Vaexjpe, on January 15, 2014 (AFP, Erik Martensson)

Vaexjoe — Pine cones, moss and rotten food are fuelling a Swedish city's quest to be sustainable, but people's attachment to their cars may put the brakes on its carbon-neutral ambition.

Nestled among glittering lakes and thick pine forests in southern Sweden, Vaexjoe has gone further than most in renewable energy, clean transport and energy conservation, promoting itself as "Europe's Greenest City".

"We started very early," Henrik Johansson at Vaexjoe local council told AFP.

"Our politicians realised in the '60s that if the city was to develop the lakes had to be cleaned up -- they'd been polluted by the linen industry in the 18th century and by the city's expansion."

A bus travels through Vaexjoe, on

January 15, 2014 (AFP, Erik Martensson)

The restoration of the most polluted waterway, Lake Trummen -- infamous for its noxious smell as far back as the 18th century -- acted as a catalyst for more ambitious environmental projects, he added.

"When I was a kid you wouldn't have dreamt of taking a swim in it, but today you can," said the 39-year-old environmental officer.

"That very obvious change has stayed in people's minds -- it showed that if you really want to do something and set your mind to it, you will succeed."

In the 1990s, before global warming was grabbing headlines, the city council announced plans to abandon fossil fuels by 2030 and to halve carbon emissions in less than two decades -- among a host of "green goals" that also encourage local farmers to go organic and everyone to reduce paper consumption and to use bicycles or public transport.

Today, Vaexjoe's CO2 emissions are indeed almost half what they were in 1993 -- one of the lowest levels in Europe at 2.7 tonnes per person -- and almost half of Sweden's already low average.

In the 1970s Vaexjoe developed a district heating and power system -- pumping heat and hot water from a central boiler around the city.

That was not unique for Sweden, but the city-owned energy company went on to pioneer a changeover from oil to biomass -- incinerating leftovers from the forestry industry.

At the plant just outside the city, Bjoern Wolgast, the director, picks up a handful of tangled twigs, moss and bark, and breathes in the pungent pine fragrance as an excavator delivers a pile of the dusty material to a nearby conveyer belt.

"It's totally renewable energy -- Swedish forests still produce more than we take out," he said, adding: "And we send ash back to fertilise the forest."

Today almost 90 percent of the city's 60,000 inhabitants get their heat and hot water from the plant, which also supplies about 40 percent of electricity needs.

Thanks to a series of filters, the plant's emissions are almost negligible -- one-twentieth of the national limit.

But whether Vaexjoe really is "Europe's Greenest City" is open for debate and the slogan irritates some locals, including ecological restaurant owner Goeran Lindblad.

"Why were we years behind other parts of the country in recycling food waste?" asked Lindblad, one of the first in Vaexjoe to start recycling food two years ago.

Nonetheless, when the local council did start collecting organic waste things happened quickly.

Two-thirds of households signed up voluntarily -- in return for lower charges -- and today the city's fleet of green biogas buses runs almost entirely on locally produced gas made from rotten food and sewage.

"It's difficult to compare cities of different sizes but I'd say it's one of Europe's greenest -- they're very advanced and ambitious," said Cristina Garzillo, a sustainability expert at the local government network ICLEI in Freiburg, Germany.

Ryan Provencher, a 39-year-old engineer, moved to Sweden from Texas just over a decade ago and could be described as a fervent convert to the green revolution.

Henrik Johansson, Environmental Coordinator

 of Vaexjoe Municipality, pictured January 15,

2014 (AFP, Erik Martensson)

"We recycle just about everything. I only use my car about twice a week and tend to run or cycle to work," he said.

Provencher lives with his wife and three children in Vaexjoe's most environmentally friendly "positive house", which sends more energy back to the local grid than it uses thanks to a roof covered in solar panels and an array of other energy-saving gadgets.

He says the contrast with life in Waco, where his parents live, is like "night and day".

"Gas is so cheap there that nobody thinks twice about driving."

Vaexjoe may be a world away from Waco, but many of its residents have a similar love affair with the car -- about 60 percent drive -- and it has proved hard to change that, making the city's fossil-free goal harder to achieve.

"We're dependent on national changes and on car and fuel companies to make alternatives available. We can't force people out of their cars," Johansson said.

"But we're making it more and more attractive to use bikes or buses and harder to drive shorter distances. And it's pretty easy to make quick improvements: gas stations are already blending biofuels into ordinary fuel so everyone can start lowering their CO2 emissions."

"By 2030 I think we'll be at least 80 percent there," Johansson said.

"And that would not be so bad!"

Rising Seas Threaten 21 Mega-Cities

Guardian United, Saturday October 20, 2007 7:31 PM

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Cities around the world are facing the danger of rising seas and other disasters related to climate change.

Of the 33 cities predicted to have at least 8 million people by 2015, at least 21 are highly vulnerable, says the Worldwatch Institute.

They include Dhaka in Bangladesh; Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro; Shanghai and Tianjin in China; Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt; Mumbai and Kolkata in India; Jakarta in Indonesia; Tokyo and Osaka-Kobe in Japan; Lagos in Nigeria; Karachi in Pakistan; Bangkok in Thailand, and New York and Los Angeles in the United States, according to studies by the United Nations and others.

More than one-tenth of the world's population, or 643 million people, live in low-lying areas at risk from climate change, say U.S. and European experts. Most imperiled, in descending order, are China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Egypt, the U.S., Thailand and the Philippines.

Schwarzenegger says cities will lead climate change battle

SFG.com, Saturday, June 23, 2007

(06-23) 13:46 PDT Los Angeles (AP) --

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told U.S. mayors Saturday they must take the lead in battling global warming and creating an economy based on "clean" technology.

Schwarzenegger said California and other states are "not waiting for Washington" before promoting legislation to protect the environment by reducing greenhouse emissions blamed for climate change.

"Washington is just a little dot on the map. You are making up America. So we don't have to wait for Washington to get aboard," Schwarzenegger told the 75th annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which made the environment one of its top agenda items.

The governor cited his state's own environmental initiatives and praised efforts such as a proposal by New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg to make all taxis in his city fuel-efficient hybrids by 2012.

The Bush Administration has opposed placing specific limits on greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. But Schwarzenegger has signed a law requiring that California reduce emissions by an estimated 25 percent by 2020.

"I don't think we can waste anymore time. I think that global warming is real. It is a huge, huge problem," Schwarzenegger said.

Global warming has caused "longer droughts, more intense hurricanes and deadlier wildfires," he said.

Schwarzenegger urged cities to push polluting industries to change their practices in order to compete globally.

California, with its stringent auto emission standards, "may be doing more to save U.S. automakers than anybody else because we are pushing them to change," he said.

"We are growing a whole new economy based on innovation and clean technology that will spark billions and billions of dollars of new investments and create tens of thousands of new jobs," Schwarzenegger said.

"That is the future that I want to embrace," he said.

The governor said companies already are moving in that direction, and clean technology will become more affordable as it becomes more widespread.

He cited the example of the cellular telephone. Schwarzenegger said he bought an early cell phone 20 years ago for $1,600. Recently he bought his daughter a new phone "with all the gadgets on it" for $90.

About 200 mayors from around the country attended the meeting, which runs through Tuesday.

On Saturday, the conference announced that the mayors of Albuquerque, N.M., and Fayetteville, Ark., had won first place honors in this year's Mayors' Climate Protection Awards Program.

The awards honor mayors for measures to curb global warming and increase energy efficiency.

Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez was recognized for shepherding a city program that promotes "green-tech" companies, use of bicycles and purchase of cleaner city vehicles. The program has caused an overall reduction of city greenhouse gas emissions by 67 percent since 2000.

Fayetteville Mayor Dan Coody was selected for a city alternative transportation program that created 129 miles of multi-use trails and 163 miles of on-street linkages to the city

HSBC to mobilise 'green taskforce' to tackle climate change

HSBC has announced a new five-year US$100 million programme to help tackle the causes and impacts of climate change.

By James Kon

The bank is joining forces with The Climate Group, Earthwatch Institute, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and WWF to form the HSBC Climate Partnership.

The partnership will mobilise HSBC employees worldwide into a "green taskforce" to address the issue of climate change.

This new partnership will build upon the good work done in HSBC's "Investing in Nature" programme, which concluded last year, after five years, and help train 200 scientists, send 2,000 HSBC employees, including those from Brunei on conservation research projects and help save 12,000 plant species from extinction.

"The HSBC Climate Partnership will achieve something profoundly important," said HSBC Group Chairman Stephen Green.

"Over the next five years, HSBC will respond to climate change to our business operations and intrinsic to the way we work with our clients across the world," he added.

The work being carried out will focus on four key areas, namely to make some of the world's biggest cities such as Hong Kong, London, Mumbai, New York and Shanghai cleaner and greener, to create climate champions across the world who will participate in field research and return to share their knowledge and experience with their communities, to conduct the largest-ever field experiment on the world's forests to measure carbon and the effects of climate change, to help protect four of the world's major rivers like the Amazon, Ganges, Yangtze and Thames from the impact of climate change.

The US$100 million commitment that HSBC is contributing to the partnership marks the largest-ever charitable donation given by a UK-based company.

The funds will allow charities to get more things done, in more places, and to get more people involved than there had ever been in the past.

"By working with four of the world's most respected environmental organisations and creating a "green taskforce" of thousands of HSBC employees worldwide, we believe we can tackle the causes and impacts of climate change," said Stephen Green.

Chill Bill: Microsoft teams with Clinton to develop green software

Emissions tracking IT free to monitor footprints

Computerworld UK

By Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service

Microsoft will work with the Clinton Foundation to develop free web-based software and services that cities around the world can use to monitor their carbon emissions and share ideas about environmental protection.

The announcement, made on Thursday, comes a day after former President Clinton said his foundation would finance the renovation of buildings in 16 cities in different parts of the world to make them more environmentally friendly.

Cities will be able to use the online software to better understand their environmental impact and to participate in an online community, sharing ideas and best practices and collaborating. The software will allow users to monitor their progress and track the effectiveness of emissions reduction programmes. It will be compatible with some existing emissions reduction products, but Microsoft didn't list which ones.

Read More ....

Household tips for cleaning up our city

The Jakarta Post

Households are the cornerstone of our city. How they manage their waste in turn affects city sanitation. In the last of three guides, The Jakarta Post's Adianto P. Simamora, Anissa S. Febrina and Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak provide tips on how households can keep the city clean.

Waste management

- Start sorting your own garbage, provide two separate bins for organic and non-organic waste.

- To avoid scavengers creating mess, observe your garbage man's schedule and take out your already sorted garbage when he comes around.

Septic tank

- Make sure your septic tank is located at least 10 meters from wells or water pumps. - For a family of five, the standard size of your septic tank should be no less than one cubic meter. - Empty your septic tank every two years. - To ensure that liquid waste doesn't mix with groundwater, build a seepage pit.

Sources: Indonesian Architects Association, BPPT, WWF Indonesia Power Switch campaign, www.epa.gov, Drinking Water and Sanitation Working Group, Waspola, Public Works Ministry, various sources.