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Being the green capital

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The closeness to nature and outdoor life is one of the greatest things about Stockholm. Photo: Henrik Trygg/Stockholm Visitors Board.

2010 Stockholm is appointed Europé’s Green capital and seminars about different aspects of this are held all over the city. Yesterday I attended one of them, listening to Ulla Hamilton who is vice mayor and responsible for environment and traffic in Stockholm.

Less than 300 meters

She pointed out that Stockholm has quite a long tradition of working with environmental issues and presented a whole lot of figures to be proud of. We have a unique access to large green areas inside and close to the city. In fact, 95 percent of the population here is said to live less than 300 meters away from a green open space. A new urban district is planned with special environmental consideration and for 2050 the goal by the city council is to be wholly independent of fossil fuels.

Statistic lottery

But statistics can be tricky, though. One of the figures used a lot to describe how green we Stockholmers are, is the per capita emissions of CO2. The average in Sweden is about 6 tons/person and year, but in Stockholm we are down at 3,4 . Although people are good at using the public transport system and cycling, I couldn’t quite understand that. So I asked a person from the city council how this was calculated and he explained to me that that all the activities in the municipality are counted, but not what happens above 100 meters and not what we consume which is produced elsewhere. That makes it advantageous for us, since only the start and landing part of our flights are counted, and since the municipality doesn’t have a lot of heavy industries.

In that way I must admit I feel a bit like having been given the right lottery ticket. Worse, though, for the inhabitants of Oxelösund, where a lot of heavy industry is situated. In the statistics every person in their municipality accounts for 134 tons/year…

 

Sara Jeswani - Sustainability

February 26, 2010

  • Cecilia

    Yes, you have a point there! It is always important to find out what figures stand for!

  • Pol

    You can not look at a city, especially big city without its region. This has some meaning for inhabitants of the city of course, but beyond that it is classical nowadays demagogics and delusion, which i (sorry to say) despise the most. It only undermines the real efforts and brings already omnipresent distrust and confusion. In fact this is maybe even our biggest problem today, good point.

  • Sara

    Thank you for your comments. I think it is important to see how regions are not isolated entities, but dependent on each other. For example it would be difficult to live in any big city without surrounding areas providing food. But in some ways it is actually easier to be more sustainable in a city, where public transport is more developed and most people live in flats which consume less energy.

  • Xi Dam

    Hello – This is great Green Easter news! Why not start here on plastic packaging with Stockholm as the First European Green Capital 2010. Thrown away trash ends up in the water!! Please see: http://plasticpolicy.eu beautiful =/ environmental (this comment was deleted by thelocal.se)

  • Kristin Follis

    The trash cans are also full. The good news is they have so many volunteers the next day cleaning it up it usually goes back to normal in a few hours!

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