Find Swedish best practice

At times of more extreme weather caused by climate change, the downside of dense cities with few green spaces and more paved surfaces is evident; extreme heat, flooding and reduced biodiversity. Blue Green City Lab is a test bed that evaluates new and proven ‘blue-green’ solutions to mitigate these effects.

Ohboy the Bicycle House in Malmö is designed, built and owned by architects Hauschild + Siegel. Owning the process from drawing board to finished product has allowed the architects control the entire concept and ensure it meets their vision of a smarter way to live.

With its 9500 sqm the Botanical Roof Garden of Augustenborg is an ever-evolving testbed of urban greening. Here you get to see more than 20 different solutions for greening a rooftop, from the most extensive green roofs to biosolar solutions and even a rooftop kitchen garden.

By unlocking traditional business models within waste management, Verapark is an innovation platform in which the business sector, the public sector and universities collaborate to develop new ideas for recycling and upcycling waste.

In Kristianstad, one of the most polluted areas in southern Sweden has been decontaminated as part of a project to achieve a toxin-free environment. Toxins were reduced by 99.9% and the area is now the development site for a new residential district.

Extended Producer responsibility (EPR) is a governmental policy and a Swedish law that aims to better waste management and collection. The Swedish system shifts the waste management cost or physical collection fully from local governments to producers. The policy applies to different goods such as packaging, newsprint, electronic products, batteries, tires, end-of-life vehicles, pharmaceutical waste, stray radioactive products and radioactive sources.

The Augustenborg district in Malmö was ambitiously rebuilt to manage flooding problems and socioeconomic challenges. As a result of solutions based on ecosystem services, the area is now an attractive neighbourhood and an example of a successful sustainable makeover of an urban district.

A new water purification system uses floating walls, or baffles, to improve purification. The solution has been developed by a Swedish company and can be used in all kinds of dams, for surface or storm water, leachate, industrial water and sewerage water.

World’s first eco-labeled heating!

As the first company in the world, Falun Energy & Water now delivers heating, cooling and electricity with Environmental Certification. The label sets very high standards for the goods accepted and is often called “the world’s toughest environmental label”.

Umeå Municipality has a total of 19 wastewater treatment plants. The largest handles waste water from households and various companies in the area. Every year, it receives about 13 million cubic metres of waste water, containing 3,000 tonnes of organic material and 80 tonnes of phosphorus. And every day it produces 23,000 kWh of biogas.

The small island of Händelö, which is part of the City of Norrköping in eastern Sweden, is home to a remarkable industrial symbiosis in which by-products from one company are used as input for neighbouring companies Everything at the site is based around using green energy.

Malmö’s Western Harbour, previously a run-down shipyard and industrial area covering 187 hectares, is now a vibrant ‘city within a city’, with a university, around 10,000 residents and more than 16,000 people working there (figure from 2016). The area has its own systems for managing its energy supply and waste treatment, and car traffic in the area has been minimised as an environmentally sustainable approach to urban planning and mobility.