Sustainability concept for a newly built urban area in Malmö, Sweden C. Gruvberger*, H. Aspegren*, B. Andersson* and J. la Cour Jansen** * Malmö Water and Sewage Works, S-205 80 Malmö, Sweden (E-mail: cgr@malmowater.com) ** Lund Institute of Technology, Box 118, S-221 00 Lund, Sweden Abstract National goals regarding sustainable development from the Swedish government were decisive in the planning process when the newly built city district Western Harbour was established in the city of Malmö, Sweden. A systems analysis was used as a tool for evaluating different collection and treatment systems. This type of analysis does not include more subjective factors such as acceptance of organic fertilisers based on human waste and user acceptance of collection schemes. These aspects, however, will often determine the success of a technical solution. When the system for collection and treatment of solid organic waste and wastewater was designed, both subjective and objective factors were considered. This meant that a centralised solution for wastewater treatment was selected. In order to facilitate a more sustainable solution for sludge management a treatment process with recovery of phosphorus will have to be introduced. Organic waste is sorted out and treated in an anaerobic digestion process. Source sorting of solid organic waste has been difficult to implement in Sweden due to inadequate sorting discipline. As a consequence two relatively new systems are tested in the area. A comprehensive evaluation will be carried out during a period of two years. Keywords Biogas; ecocycles; food waste disposer; phosphorus recovery; source sorting Introduction The primary environmental objective for the Swedish government concerning sustainable development is to hand over a society to the next generation in which the major environmen- tal problems have been solved. In a bill from the Swedish government regarding Swedish Environmental Quality Goals, “An Environmental Policy for a Sustainable Sweden”, a new structure for pursuing Sweden’s environmental objectives is proposed. The bill defines 15 quality goals for the environmental state that the Government intends to achieve. Ecocycles for water, energy and waste are key factors to promote the sustainable development. There are no specific goals with regard to water reuse or water saving as water of high quality is generally abundant in Sweden. In contrast there are more specific goals for solid waste. It should be taken care of in the following order of priority: 1. re-use, 2. recycle, 3. energy use, 4. deposition. Furthermore in the goal “A good urban environment”, it is stated that phosphorus in waste and wastewater should be recovered and used on arable land with- out hazard to health and environment. It is consequently implied that source sorting of solid organic waste should be implemented in order to improve recycling of phosphorus and to get a high quality energy source (biogas). As a response to these goals, a number of Swedish municipalities have started experi- ments with sorting systems for solid waste and wastewater. Although the proposed sorting schemes may seem straightforward in theory, it has been experienced that they can be rather difficult to implement in practice and that success requires good technical solutions as well as user transparency of the system. The Western Harbour – a new city district in Malmö The city of Malmö is situated on the Swedish coast just across from the city of Copenhagen in Denmark. The two cities and the surrounding area forms the expansive Öresund region Water Science and Technology Vol 47 No 7–8 pp 33–39 © IWA Publishing 2003 33 Downloaded from http://iwaponline.com/wst/article-pdf/47/7-8/33/422775/33.pdf by guest on 04 May 2021