In June a delegation from Kaliningrad will visit Malmö, Sweden. The mayor of Kaliningrad together with the vice mayor, city manager and city lawyer, will take the opportunity to learn more about waste management in Malmö while they also look at district heating solutions. This will be a start for Kaliningrad's participation in Waste to Resources.

On 24-25 May project partners and specially invited guests will meet in Koszalin for a Half Time Conference and Project meeting. The conference will summarize what was learned so far, to create a point of departure for the rest of the project. Project partners will present their pilot studies and activities.

The installation of a hanger, a rather unassuming metal hook, has added impetus to the collection of food waste at Ecocity Augustenborg in Malmö, Sweden. The hanger has improved practical handling of kitchen waste.

Sorting of food waste doubled in a few months. It then fell back and seems to have ended up at a level that is 25 per cent higher than before this initiative, according to the two partners of Waste to Resources, Sysav and VA Syd.

Augustenborg in Malmö – a pilot area

The Augustenborg residential area has long been a pilot area for the development of waste management in Malmö. Since 2008, food waste has been collected separately in paper bags so that it can be biologically processed by waste company Sysav.  Unfortunately, however, the amount of food waste that was sorted was pretty small,” says Stig Edner, CEO at Sysav Utveckling AB.
The “And around again” initiative , which is part of Waste to Resources, is about trying to increase the amount of sorted food waste.

Limited space in kitchen

One barrier for residents in sorting their food waste is that the kitchens are small and space to store the sorting equipment is limited. Masters students in design and production at Malmö University were therefore given the task of designing a good sorting solution to keep under the sink in the kitchen. This resulted, among other things, in the small metal hook that makes it easy to suspend the food waste basket.
The sorting equipment was placed in some of the residential blocks in the area. In connection with this, a brochure was distributed to explain the environmental benefits of collecting food waste in an exciting way.
“But interviews we conducted with the residents reveal that few had taken notice of the brochure and those that had read it thought that the message was too far-fetched and hard to understand. We probably overestimated residents’ knowledge from the outset and should have included more basic information in the brochure,” says Minnie Bissmont, development engineer at VA Syd.

Few took notice of brochure

The resulting increase in the amount of waste collected, therefore, seems mainly to have been due to the installation of the practical equipment.
“We will continue the project by installing the sorting equipment in more homes in the area and supplementing it with a bag with compartments for sorting packaging that can be placed under the sink,” says Stig Edner.

A special hook is required to make sorting of food waste convenient in the small kitchens.

The amount of food waste collected in the ECOcity Augustenborg in Malmö, Sweden, used to be enough for a biogas fueled car to go one and a half laps around the world. With the information campaign ‘And around again’ (“Ett varv till” in Swedish) the goal was set higher. The car could run two full laps around the globe on just biogas if we could make households increase their sorted food waste from 22 to 29 kg/person and year.

The Augustenborg residential area has long been a pilot area for the development of waste management in Malmö.

We wish our readers a good and relaxing time over the Easter holidays. Please do not forget to recycle the extra amount of waste usually produced over this period!

Happy Easter!