Clean and Beautiful Stockholm

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Cleanliness is one of the best features of Stockholm that makes it such an appealing place to visit, live, study, or work in. Out of many national capitals such as Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Tokyo and Washington DC, only a few can boast of a clean and sanitary environment, and the capital city of Sweden is definitely one of the cleanest national capitals in the world. Moreover, in 2009 Stockholm, alongside Hamburg, was honored with a title of the Green Capital of Europe, applied by EU Commission.

Indeed, an ecological policy features the best ways of posing this city as the cleanest in the area. People can drink tap water without fear of intoxication, swim in and go fishing to Melaren Lake in the heart of the city. Swedish people keep ecological rules very thoroughly, up to very little things. The reasons might be found in severe climate, absence of fuel resources and large-scale industry or, at least, old-fashioned European mentality. All in all, this fact tells its own tale: Stockholm is considered one of the ecofriendly cities one can travel to, which is justified by certain issues.

Transport in Stockholm works on the ethanol or biogas energy. Busslink, a leader in bus traffic in the city, provides Scania vehicle solely, 95% of which use ethanol. As for biogas, specialists recommend to construct special facilities near big cities (including Stockholm) to recycle organic wastes. It is interesting to know that unlike its neighbor Finland, Sweden highly appreciates any kind of alternative energy production. Finnish authorities, on the contrary, oppose to biogas generation due to necessity of replacement of rich forests with palm tree plantings. Noise pollution is also an aspect Swedish people are worried about. Especially, it is prevented in metro, where there is possible even to whisper.

Recycling wastes is one of the appealing issues of urban ecology. Most of the garbage is sorted and, therefore, there are containers established for different types of trash. One might observe small litter-boxes on the central streets and large garbage cans in the residential districts, both are divided into several bins for: plastics, metal, colored and transparent glass, electric batteries, paper, etc. The next stage of recycling wastes is associated with its absorption by pipelines of underground vacuum system and further processing. In particular, organic trash is turned into biogas, newspapers are reconverted and the other garbage serves as energy source for centralized heating system.

Hammarby Sjöstad is acknowledged as the cleanest district in Stockholm due to multiple innovative sustainable solutions realized. In 1990s political authorities of Sweden decided to make this area as clean as possible to host the Olympic Games.

Besides recycling wastes, much attention is paid to wastewaters. Residents were made to reduce water usage twice and contribute to local energy production (about 50% of energy is provided by residents). In particular, it is related to utilization of wastewater heat and domestic wastes for the purposes of heating, cooling and electricity generation. Nowadays all the energy sources produced in Hammarby Sjöstad have certificates of being environmentally friendly.