Sundsvall:
Eco-auditing and its bottom-up approach
Sundsvall:
| |
| Country: | a) Northern Europe | ,b) Sweden |
| Language: | |
| Type: | Policy, Concept, 1 |
| Area: | City/Town, 20,000-100,000 |
| Actors: | Local government |
| Funding: | Local government |
| Topics: | Environmental education |
| Information and public participation | |
| Objectives: | Improve access to information |
| Improve environmental efficiency | |
| Increase public awareness | |
| Instruments: | Eco audit / Environm. Impact Assessment |
| Integrated planning approach | |
| New urban management tools and instuments | |
| Public participation |
Sundsvall´s image has been strongly associated with its major industries and consequently Sundsvall had become known as a town burdened with environmental problems. The city was even called „the dirty man of Sweden“. However, in the last years important improvements have been achieved by the efforts of the industries themselves and the municipality. Probably the most important step was the Miljöprojekt which was promoted by the central government in partnership with the local authority. The aim was to change the image of Sundsvall and to improve its environmental quality, mainly by the Miljöplan. This plan also included internal auditing projects. The three audits of municipal establishments were among the first internal audits in Sweden as previous measures only affected private enterprises.
Sundsvall is particularly noteworthy for the ´bottom-up´ approach in its environmental work. The following elements of the auditing process are of interest:
It is the commitment and involvement of the citizens at home, at work, at school and organisations which determines the level of success in environmental undertakings. Today Sundsvall is regarded in an environmental context as one of Sweden´s most progressive cities.
As a result of its industrial heritage and its particular location in a valley „bowl“ with steep and high hills to the north and south, the Sundsvall area has experienced a range of environmental problems. The main problems are:
Against this background, perhaps the most significant event in the development of Sundsvall´s environmental work was the appointment in 1989 by the Swedish government of a Commission of Inquiry in respect of the state of the environment in the Sundsvall-Timrå region. (Timrå is a neighbouring municipality.) This was one of four such Commissions (the other three Commissions were set up for Göteborg, the River Dalälven and Western Skåne). The government viewed these projects as experimental, with the intention that they would act as catalysts and inspire work in other parts of the country. The terms of reference laid down by the government for the „Sundsvall-Timrå Environmental Project“ (Miljöprojekt) were that the Commissions should take initiatives and propose measures which would substantially improve the state of the environment in this area within ten years. As a result a number of projects were started up and some 30 individual reports prepared. The topics ranged from traffic planning problems and public transport, old industrial sites and industrial waste, to waste problems in the future and new fuels for heavy vehicles. Most emphasis was put on identifying environmental problems, forecasting environmental trends and suggesting new initiatives. Two of the reports focused particularly on environmental auditing („miljörevision“) in both private and public sectors.
The final report was presented to the government in 1990 and after a period of consultation most of its recommendations were accepted by the municipality in 1991. The Commission included an outline Environmental Plan and suggested that this should be followed up with monitoring and review. In 1991 the city council shaped the recommendations into its own 24 page, 120-point Environmental Plan, the Miljöplan. For each of the 120 action points, the plan contains a brief statement of the problems and needs. The plan covers projects for the period 1992-94 and includes specific recommendations especially for the following measures:
The follow-up to the Miljöplan covers the period 1995-2000, as part of the city´s work with the Local Agenda 21.
In addition, the City of Sundsvall publishes an Environmental Balance Sheet („Miljöbokslut“) every three years. This document is an important component of the eco-auditing process as it concentrates on describing the environmental situation of Sundsvall and the work carried out. It covers a wide number of environmental topics; for each topic the emphasis is on:
The material is quite informative and educational. Written mainly for the public, it intends to raise awareness about local environmental concerns and is not meant as an evaluative document.
The implementation of the Miljöplan focuses on five main areas:
The first three points highlight the Sundsvall approach to eco-auditing as they identify the current state of the environmental process in specific environmental media as well as within the local administrations.
Work on the environmental balance sheet is facilitated by a range of data sources used by the Sundsvall municipality that monitor physical changes in environmental conditions. Sundsvall´s monitoring is relatively comprehensive. To measure air pollution, for example, the municipality has several static stations and also mobile air quality monitoring equipment capable of measuring levels of SO2, NOx, particles, benzene, formaldehyde, and ozone. Regular data are collected, e.g. on:
Beside these activities, a number of ad hoc research investigations are conducted by the environment protection department each year. Recent studies have included an inventory of potentially hazardous cleaning materials on sale in the town and an investigation of the handling of mercury and other hazardous waste at the town´s many laboratories.
The municipality as a whole has not been involved in a formal and systematic internal audit. However, as part of the Miljöprojekt, a number of pilot projects on what was termed „internal environmental auditing“ (intern miljörevision) were carried out at three municipal and two industrial establishments.
According to what is known as the „American Model“ of internal auditing the Miljöprojekt identified a number of key characteristics of the auditing process:
The three audits in Sundsvall´s municipal establishments were regarded to be among the first, if not the first, in Sweden as previous internal auditing only affected private enterprises. One was carried out on a sewage treatment works, another on a household waste incinerator and bio-energy installation and a third on a waste incinerator. The auditors were selected in collaboration with two other municipalities, Uppsala and Norrköping. The main objective of the pilot studies was to test the methodology of auditing rather than to conduct a complete environmental audit. Emphasis focused on investigating the reliability of control and everyday work routines to ensure environmental obligations were met in each of the establishments. The Miljöplan contained a policy to carry out further similar internal environmental audits among large industrial and municipal establishments. Since then a number of annual follow-up audits, completions of earlier audits and entirely new audits have been carried out in both private firms and public enterprises.
The following lessons can be learned from the pilot studies:
These two activities provide another example of the bottom-up approach to eco-auditing. Staff seminars and reference groups have been used extensively to keep staff in different departments informed about significant external environmental movements and developments. These have encouraged staff to take a role in evaluating current initiatives in the light of these trends, thereby raising awareness and the quality of analysis and discussion. Other seminars have been more formal „progress-reporting“ and follow-up sessions of on-going environmental initiatives and projects, thus encouraging self-evaluation by operational level staff. As a direct result of the encouragement of staff involvement, a number of new environmental projects have been accepted by the municipality. These projects started as ideas by members of the operational or administrative staff. For example, the „Green Purchasing“ Scheme and the „Clean Workplace“ Project were initiated.
In the Green Purchasing Scheme, municipal purchasing patterns were targeted for improvement. The aim was to reduce detriment to the environment caused by products whose manufacture or impacts are environmentally unfriendly. The policy document offers advice and constraint in relation to the purchase of a number of products. It lists compounds used in the manufacture of goods which should be avoided in products purchased by the municipalities. It also recommends certain goods, e.g. vehicles, food, paper, cleaning products. The intention is to monitor and revise the list every six months.
The Clean Workplace Project arose out of the Green Purchasing Scheme in 1993 and focuses on good environmental performance of the local authority itself. The first year 52 municipal workplaces volunteered to become involved (representing 10 % of employees), the second year 100 workplaces and the third year 158 workplaces with 3,700 employees. 287 key-persons have been educated. After a two-day residential environmental education course, these persons were given the task of organising working groups and meetings in each workplace to stimulate new ideas, e.g. to use double-sided photo-copying, not using plastic cups. At present, around eighty workplaces are now involved in the scheme.
The importance of actively involving Sundsvall´s inhabitants and the operational staff of the municipality has been stressed in both the environmental project and more recently, in the authority´s Local Agenda 21 work. Therefore, a number of initiatives concerning education and public information have been established.
For example, among pre-school day-care centres there is a very ambitious scheme of environmental education. For the last three years, there has been a series of training sessions for staff and so far almost 25% of nursery school teachers have taken part (there are over 150 nursery schools in Sundsvall). A similar venture has been promoted in the primary and secondary schools, and there has also been a school video project. Other projects are
The City of Sundsvall also initiated some business-orientated projects. For example, the Sundsvall Development Company, set up by the municipality, has a number of projects designed to foster industrial competence in the field of environmental engineering (e.g. technologies for waste disposal and treatment; pollution reduction). These have focused on developing business networks between firms for information transfer and marketing. They have also attempted to help firms in the local area to exploit business opportunities in the environmental field, and not just to see environmental regulations as constraints. However, little formal evaluation of the impact of such projects on the profitability of the firms has taken place.
The Miljöprojekt provided a very substantial impetus to environmental initiatives in Sundsvall. There is now a significant level of environmental awareness at higher levels of the municipality. The city has accepted that environmental issues are very important for its strategic development. Furthermore, the Miljöprojekt brought with it additional resources which the local authority would not otherwise have had. The municipality is now very experienced in terms of its environmental work, although its environmental management system has been developed in a rather ad hoc way. It has produced not so much a systematic or methodological approach of the kind found in the British EMAS Scheme for local government, instead it has emerged in a piecemeal fashion from a variety of decision-making and decision-improving initiatives.
Especially, the active involvement of local people in the original Miljöprojekt and their continuing participation at the local level has clearly been vital. It became clear that auditing does not have to be seen simply as a tool imposed from above. Feedback from the public and the operational staff - e.g. the environmental health officers and outreach workers - is continuously encouraged. In consequence, a number of environmental initiatives and evaluation of initiatives have come directly from those not conventionally involved in more managerial approaches. These people felt more a part of the whole process and thus new ideas for environmental improvement are generated.
The Sundsvall approach also showed that environmental auditing does not necessarily have to be high budget. It does not have to be particularly costly in terms of staff time and financial resources. Many of its component parts have been, on the contrary, relatively inexpensive. It became clear that low- budget approaches can be very effective. Public opinion, awareness and participation in environmental initiatives is actively encouraged in Sundsvall. Great emphasis is placed on environmental education both through training schemes and through activities like the environmental calendar. In response to these initiatives, there is now a strong public demand for environmentally- friendly products and practices in both public and private organisations.
As far as environmental initiatives are concerned, key parts of the local authority are the Executive Board, the Planning Committee of the Executive Board, the Environmental Protection Board, the Building Regulation and Physical Planning Board and Sundsvall Energi. In addition, there is an interdepartmental working group on environmental matters made up of senior officers (including the City Manager, the Director of the Building Regulation and Physical Planning Department, the Head of the Planning Department of the Executive Board and the Director of the Environmental Protection Department).
Responsibility for co-ordinating and monitoring the measures proposed in the Miljöplan and for securing support for the environmental project´s overall aims from the local people and business community is allocated to the Council´s Executive Board. The Environmental Group is charged with leading the environmental work and co-ordinating with the heads of the different Service Departments in the municipality and all the other relevant agencies. In addition, an environment information officer and service has been established.
The budget for the Miljöprojekt was set at SEK 13 million (approximately £ 1 million), including money from research agencies and industry. The municipality allocated SEK 27 million to the budget to implement the Miljöplan in the first three years in addition to the money already allocated for ongoing environmental work. This sum was later increased very slightly to SEK 27.1 million, but the amount was spread over four instead of three years.
City of Sundsvall 1996: Information brochure on Environmental Work in Sundsvall, draft November 1996
City of Sundsvall: Sundsvall Environmental Balance Sheet - Miljöbokslut
Gavelin, Peter: Sundsvall, an application of a `bottom-up´ approach in environmental work, manuscript
Pearce, Barry 1995: „Sundsvall, Sweden: An Alternative Approach to Eco-Auditing ?“, in: The Sustainable City - Urban Eco-Auditing and Local Authorities in Europe, Part one, Dublin: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, p.63-78
Sundsvall-Timrå Environmental Project: Clean by the Environment Year 2000, leaflet
| Name | : | Gavelin |
| Firstname | : | Peter |
| Telefon | : | 0046 / 60 / 191175 |
| Telefax | : | 0046 / 60 / 614437 |
| Address | : | City of Sundsvall |
| Environment and Health Office | ||
| S - 851 85 Sundsvall, Sweden |
Sundsvall is a medium-sized city with a population of 94,000 and an area of 3,206 km2. The city is situated in the centre of Sweden on the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, some 400 kilometres north of Stockholm. Approximately 200,000 people live within one hour´s travelling distance, the largest concentration of population in the Norrland region.
The region is part of the northern boreal zone and 90% of the landscape is woodland. This location has meant that timber and water power have provided the backbone of industrial development since the sixteenth century. For over one hundred years the Sundsvall region has been the industrial, commercial and financial heart of northern Sweden and has enjoyed considerable prosperity. Although industry has declined, and nowadays 69% of the working population is employed in the service sector, it is still dominant and the local economy remains reasonably buoyant.
Today Sundsvall is an important industrial centre. Major products include cellulose, aluminium, as well as metal and chemical products. There are also a number of hydro-electric power stations in the region, several national government offices and an expanding tertiary level college.
Project was added at 23.01.1997
Project was changed at 10.03.1998