On the 28th of January, Sustainable Sweden and Sekom have organized a webinar named « Organic Waste Powers City Transporation » through the Ecomuna hub.
The webinar was about 1,5 hours and the guests were Lars Thunberg (president of Sekom and vice mayor of Helsingborg city) and Kim Olsson (CEO of NSR AB, which is working in Helsingborg). All the attendees were from North America and interested in Waste Management within the city and most of them were representatives of municipalities that are following the Natural Step’s 4 system conditions.
After a brief introduction of the Ecomuna Team that worked on the organization of this meeting, Mr. Thunberg gave us a presentation introducing the history, the work and the goals of Sekom. After having reminded us that Sekom is the oldest municipality organization for sustainable development in the world (the first eco-municipality was « born » in 1983), Mr. Thunberg gave us the key to understand how a municipality in Sweden has the capacity to build a sustainable development plannification. In fact, Sweden is one of the most decentralized countries in the world : people are paying most of their taxes directly to their municipalities, which are responsible to run most of the public services and have a monopoly on physical planning and land use.
At this point, Sekom has reached 90 municipalities, that has become or will become eco-municipalities. The goal of the association is to be a leading network for a sustainable Sweden.
Besides his role as president for Sekom, Mr. Thunberg is also vice mayor of Helsingborg. This city is an eco-municipality since 1995, and there is a will of the city council members to work together for sustainable development over any political consideration. Their challenges are to have the city sustainable for 2035, to build more sustainable houses and to become energy neutral.
That’s why they are working together with the company NSR AB (http://www.nsr.se/), represented by its CEO Kim Olsson during the meeting. This company is in charge of Waste Management within 6 municipalities (it’s a public owned company) to produce Biogas for Public Transportation. Their work is based on a system view thinking. It means investments for news ways of treating the waste, but also to bet on the new generations to fulfill the aim of the company, which is to make people understand that waste is a ressource to produce new renewable energy. In a long term perspective, the goal is to inspire people consuming the products they bought, not to throw them away without using, consuming them.
For more details, we invite you to see the record of the meeting. You can find it here: http://card.adobeconnect.com/
Don’t hesitate to have a look at the Ecomuna facebook page and give us a like if you want the news: https://www.facebook.com/ecomunicipality
Sustainable Sweden, Sekom and the Ecomuna Team want to thank you for your participation, both presenters and people that attended the meeting !
