2 En kortfattad utredning om kompostering på Augustenborg, collated by Håkan Andersson, MKB Fastighets AB, 2003-06-30. Accessed in the City of Malmö Environment Department’s archive
Anna Bernstad Saraiva
Anna Bernstad Saraiva, PhD. Worked for MKB Fastighets AB from 2013 to 2014 as a project manager for the Eco-city Augustenborg as well as being an environmental project manager between 2017 and 2020.
Two memories stand out for Anna Granberg:
“A couple of IT guys who worked nights and slept during the day were the most difficult to reach. When I finally got hold of them, it turned out they only ate pizza, so I showed them where the cardboard recycling bin was.”
“There was a single mother who was very negative at an event. ‘Why should we do this rubbish?’ she shouted in a rage. Later she joined one of the future workshops we held and went on to become the chair of the electric car pool and one of the best ambassadors for the recycling houses and the Eco-city Augustenborg. ‘Single mothers need an electric car pool’.”
When disposing of hazardous waste, electron-ics and bulky waste (for instance furniture) Au-gustenborg’s residents were referred to the muni- cipality’s recycling centre. The recycling centre is about ten kilometres from the district, which meant residents needed a car to recycle the waste.
Only one in five local residents owned a car at that time. Bulky rubbish (for instance sizable electrical waste) was therefore often left in recycling houses, basements or dumped outside. Such incorrect pro-cedures left time-consuming and difficult waste disposal to the local property managers, and large
costs for property owner MKB. A few years after the recycling houses composting machines had been introduced, maintenance costs became high.
The collection system therefore needed to change.
In 2008 MKB, VA Syd and Sydskånes avfall-saktiebolag (Sysav) launched a project to evaluate and develop the Swedish model for household waste management, focused on increasing source separation of several different kinds of house-hold waste. A study was looking into what waste households produced and how they separated it.
Another important goal was to influence how peo-ple recycle waste, both by improving opportuni-ties to source separate additional types of rubbish as well as through information campaigns aimed at households. Researchers launched a full-scale and long-term case study in Augustenborg. Lund University (the Water and Environmental Engi-neering Division at the Department of Chemical Engineering) took responsibility for monitoring and evaluating the waste management system in the area, the impact of new solutions that were in-troduced during the Eco-city project, and finding opportunities for further improvement.
Several new solutions were introduced: the composting machines were removed, and food waste was instead sorted at source in paper bags and later handled in separate waste bins in the recycling houses. The collected food waste would then be used to produce biogas and the nutrients would be recovered. An on-site system for collect-ing bulky waste was also introduced. Households could dispose of bulky rubbish in a mobile sort-ing unit free of charge once every month. Source separation of electrical waste, hazardous waste and grease and oils was introduced in each recycling house.
Collecting hazardous waste is challenging be-cause it comes with high safety requirements, while property maintenance staff and waste col-lection staff must still have good access and work-ing conditions. A cabinet with a flexible one-way barrier for depositing hazardous waste (includ-ing light bulbs) was trialled in Augustenborg.
The cabinet was designed so that the tenants could not remove the drawers (and the hazardous waste).
The locked cabinets could only be opened by the maintenance staff who checked and separated the hazardous waste every week. Electrical waste was left in open metal baskets (1.5 cubic metres). The baskets were emptied at MKB’s request by VA Syd, while the cabinets were emptied by Sysav Kemi.
Many of Augustenborg’s residents come from cultures where fried food is common. The old pipe systems in the houses and the area meant that blocked pipe were an increasing problem.
Households were therefore given the ability to sep-arate fats and oils in 1.75-litre disposable plastic jars. There were picture guides on the lids which showed how grease and oils should be handled.
Residents could leave the jars in open boxes in the recycling houses. Households could pick up new jars in the recycling houses.
The changes that were made in the area were followed up through several analyses of waste com-position. They concluded that the separation level, that is to say the proportion of material that should
be and is separated (such as packaging, newspapers, food waste, electronic or hazardous waste), was in several cases lower than the national average. It should be remembered that areas where there are clear financial incentives to increase separation are included in the national average. This has never been done in Augustenborg. The focus here has been to provide information and facilitate source separation by offering it in full in the recycling houses. The results showed this was not enough.
When compost machines were removed and food waste was instead sorted into paper bags for biogas production, space was freed up in the recycling houses. This cleared room for cabinets and baskets for hazardous and electrical waste.
However, it did not do anything about the lack of space in apartments to separate at source there.
In-depth interviews with a few local households showed that although many were theoretically positive to source separation, they often thought that waste management in their own apartment was impractical and unhygienic. This was especial-ly true of food waste. The container which held food waste bags from VA Syd was often placed on the bench next to the sink, a limited space in Au-gustenborg’s small apartments which was mainly used for cooking (Åkesson et al., 2009). 70% of the households that separated food waste at source said that a “lack of space in the kitchen” was the main reason for not sorting food waste, according to a 2008 survey evaluating the changes in waste management (Bernstad et al., 2012).
Master’s students in the product design course at Malmö University were invited to develop a concept to improve waste separation in small kitchens. The winning design was a metal hang-er for food waste bins and a set of two reusable plastic bags for sorting four types of waste (paper, metal, plastic and glass packaging). To ensure all households in the area received the new equip-ment, a door knocking campaign was launched to help residents mount the hangers and containers on the insides of their sink cabinets and personally give them a kit for collecting packaging materials
One of the recycling houses in Augustenborg. Image by Sanna Dolck
The recycling houses had both cabinets for collecting hazardous waste and baskets for electrical waste.
Image by Marc Malmqvist/City of Malmö
separately and some paper bags for food waste.
Alongside the new equipment, MKB’s staff also spoke to residents about the environmental ben-efits of source separation and recycling and an-swered their questions. Following these experi-ments in Augustenborg, the equipment is now standard in all MKB apartments.
During the trial period when residents could sort grease and oil into 1.75-litre disposable plastic jars, many households instead elected to use other types of containers, mainly PET bottles. The dis-posable cans were therefore replaced by funnels, and households were encouraged to use these to pour grease and cooking oils into PET bottles and leave them in the recycling houses. These funnels are now also available in MKB’s other residential areas in Malmö.
Bulky waste is now collected every week in the area, and none of the residents are more than 500 metres away from a disposal point. Landlord MKB also provides trolleys to transport large items from homes to containers.
Waste management in Augustenborg today
The residents in the Eco-city Augustenborg have since the early 2000s been able to separate house-hold waste. At the moment, 13 different waste categories (clear and coloured glass, paper, plastic and metal packaging, newspapers, batteries, food waste, electrical waste, hazardous waste, bulky waste, grease and oils and residual waste) are recy-cled within 200 metres of homes. An annual sur-vey of the Eco-city Augustenborg’s residents find they are generally more satisfied with the recycling opportunities and the standard of recycling hous-es than rhous-esidents elsewhere in Malmö. However, there have been no analyses of waste management since 2012, meaning we do not know what waste volumes and source separation look like today in the area.
Developing new waste collection infrastructure
Earlier studies show that convenience is one of the most important factors that can increase household waste separation (Ando and Gosselin, 2005). This is in many cases more important than knowledge, environmental considerations and fi-nancial incentives. An important step to improve convenience is to understand the context in which households sort their waste during a daily routine and what is important to facilitate these routines.
In interviews with households in Malmö, res-idents usually dispose of household waste when they are on their way out, rather than making a separate trip to the recycling house. Therefore, there are several reasons why it could be difficult to dispose of waste in an enclosed recycling house, for instance if someone has a bicycle or pram that must be left outside. This also becomes an issue if special containers are used to separate the waste in an apartment, meaning the resident must re-turn upstairs to drop off their containers before leaving home. The feeling that you get dirty when separating waste could also prevent residents from recycling while on the way out.
An interesting new trend is increased connect- ivity through apps and social media where peo-ple share personal achievements. Improving your personal records and achieving goals will win you
“likes” from peers on social media, and can stim-ulate the individual and challenge friends, which spreads the behaviour.
Based on these experiences, the municipal housing company MKB is now looking into the how to change recycling houses’ design. The most important change is that waste can be sorted into different categories from the outside of the build-ing (see picture above). Each waste hatch needs to be opened with an electronic key, so passers-by cannot dispose of their waste there. There is also a scale under the container for residual waste. This can provide direct feedback to households on how they handle waste: less residual waste indicates more separation and a lower environmental impact.
The electronic key also allows waste to be linked to
individual households and statistics can show how much waste was put in each category in a month, for instance. The statistics can spark friendly com-petition between neighbours and get likes on so-cial media. The residual waste statistics can be in-cluded in the meter reader which shows residents their hot water and electricity use and provides feedback. A small part of the recycling room is set aside for hazardous waste and electrical waste. This room has a tap for residents to wash their hands if necessary. This increases the chance of a detour to the recycling house when residents are on their way out.
Greenhouse - Augustenborg’s densification project
Greenhouse Augustenborg was opened in March 2016. Several of the project’s environmental in-novations required collaboration between a large number of actors. This caused major challenges
The bag for collecting food waste hangs on the inside of the sink cabinets.
Image by Gugge Zelander
The recycling house in Greenhouse Augustenborg
Image by Frida Persson Boonkaew/MKB
when designing the recycling house. The digital systems in the recycling scale were not compatible with the systems in the rest of the building, and the interface that had been developed specifically for the project was not sufficiently user-friendly.
Residents can get real-time information about how much residual waste they deposited on a screen above the residual waste hatch. The hope was to let them monitor their residual waste on a monthly basis. But technical problems meant it was impossible to measure the amount of residual waste per household per month. There have not yet been any detailed analyses of the system which could shed light on how much source-separated waste is produced by residents in Greenhouse or how they separate it.
Lessons learned and a view to the future A survey of Greenhouse households at the end of 2017 showed that many liked the idea of being able to track their waste production over a month, and some had been frustrated over not being able to do this. This shows that people are interested in the ideas which underpin Greenhouse’s recycling system and how they combine convenience and personal feedback.
In Vallastaden (Linköping), the amount of un-sorted waste and un-sorted food waste a household produces, is individually measured and linked to the fees for waste management. A weight-based vacuum system creates financial incentives for the residents in apartment buildings. In this case, the
system combines weight-based fees with real-time feedback to households. There has not yet been a follow-up study of the system, but previous results have shown a 20% reduction in the amount of unseparated waste (Dahlén, 2009). Although such systems may be effective in some scenarios, they are normally impossible to install in existing areas.
The system would also require a degree of social control to avoid fly-tipping.
Continued investment to increase comfort, starting inside homes, is one of MKB’s focuses go-ing forward. It is also lookgo-ing at how to use peo-ple’s desire to replicate what others do:
• The source separation kit that was tested in Augustenborg has now become the standard in MKB’s new-build apartments and is also given as a moving-in gift to new tenants on handover. Security and visibility are keywords in the design of new recycling houses. This means, among other things, the buildings of-ten have two entrances/exits and large glass sections.
• By creating a sense that most residents handle their waste correctly, the chance of individ-ual households joining in increases. Special efforts are therefore made to model “good waste behaviour” by cleaning the houses fre-quently, and using the motto “whole, clean and tidy” in all of the waste areas.