El siguiente artículo trata sobre la gestión de residuos y una nueva visión sobre este ámbito que aporta ideas innovadoras que probablemente serán el comienzo del camino hacia el futuro, hacia la sostenibilidad y la eficiencia económica y medioambiental. Se cita Suecia cómo el referente a seguir y se plantea la implantación de medidas, ya realizadas en este país, en otros lugares cómo Canadá.
GARBAGE CAN BE SEEN AS A RESOURCE IN THE WRONG PLACE
by the Vancouver Sun May 28, 2007
Economists and ecologists across Canada are locked in debate: How much pollution can the planet absorb? How much will Kyoto cost? I think we're asking the wrong questions.
City life can isolate us from nature's laws, so that we tend to see the environment as "out there" and separate from ourselves. We have the illusion of clean homes because we make the by-products of city life -- sewage, garbage, carbon dioxide from our cars -- go away, out of sight and out of mind. In nature however, there is no "away"; nature's cycles are closed, complete, and perfect.
What would life be like in a city built on nature's rules? In October 2006, I visited Sweden to learn how their cities convert waste to energy as one way of fighting air pollution and climate change. Officials from government, municipal energy companies, and waste facilities opened their doors and patiently answered my questions. I went searching for leading-edge technologies but discovered something more valuable: Cutting-edge common sense.
Picture this: A child in Stockholm carefully puts her orange peel into a separate container. Her parents pay less to dispose of this separated waste, which is delivered not to a landfill but to the sewage plant. There, it is co-treated with sewage sludge to produce enough biogas (methane from organic material) to run 50 local buses, a number which will reach 200 by 2010. Landfill pollution is prevented, air pollution is reduced, and because the carbon in organic waste comes from the atmosphere, the biogas does not contribute to climate change.
In Stockholm the combined cost of sewage treatment, garbage, and biofuels for transportation is reduced by this simple, integrated approach. While the monthly cost of secondary treatment in Canada is $10 per home, residents of Stockholm pay $6 for advanced tertiary treatment because revenues from sales of heat and biogas help offset the treatment plant's costs.
In the smaller community of Kristianstad, biogas runs the community's transit and school buses, city trucks, taxis, and several hundred cars. Kristianstad encourages car owners to switch to biogas by subsidizing the conversion cost and providing free parking.
Swedish cities also recover energy from treated sewage with heat pumps, which in turn heat buildings through community energy systems. District heating sells for a flat rate (less than oil), which gives local energy companies an incentive to insulate subscribers' buildings. This leaves more energy in the network, allowing the company to take on more subscribers. In this simple arrangement the economic interests of the company and the environmental interests of the community are aligned. After heat is extracted from sewage by the way, the water is cold enough to run separate district cooling networks which provide air conditioning in offices -- reducing energy use further still.
In Gothenburg, 1,000 people are employed providing renewable energy from local sources, including waste. Greenhouse gases are reduced and sustainable jobs are created.
People in Stockholm have an expression: Waste is a resource in the wrong place. While we ponder a nuclear future, heat pumps could recover enough energy from sewage to heat a third of our buildings. While we subsidize oil companies to dig for fossil fuel, we spend more public money to bury millions of tonnes of organic energy in landfills every year. If we made use of waste energy and materials as Sweden does, our cities could easily meet their Kyoto targets.
Canada and Sweden share cold climates, warm hearts, and a love of hockey. But on the score of fighting pollution with intelligence, Sweden leads six-one. Their genius is integrated planning, while we've fragmented our city governments into departmental silos and committees, obscuring the big picture. Our politicians struggle with issues of sewage, energy, climate change, transportation and waste separately, and the costs add up. It's unclear who profits from this arrangement, but taxpayers and the environment pay the price.
Senior government may set policy, but in the end we're the architects of our communities, and planet-saving changes will begin here. Vancouver is dithering over upgrades to secondary treatment for the Iona and Lions Gate plants. Victoria is drafting plans for sewage treatment, but it's too early to know if a truly integrated approach will be taken.
Today our cities have a unique opportunity, and we must urge our councilors to learn from Sweden's ecological ingenuity. We can't afford anything less.
Stephen Salter has a background in energy and the environment, and is a volunteer with the Georgia Strait Alliance and the TBuck Suzuki Environmental Foundation.
City life can isolate us from nature's laws, so that we tend to see the environment as "out there" and separate from ourselves. We have the illusion of clean homes because we make the by-products of city life -- sewage, garbage, carbon dioxide from our cars -- go away, out of sight and out of mind. In nature however, there is no "away"; nature's cycles are closed, complete, and perfect.
What would life be like in a city built on nature's rules? In October 2006, I visited Sweden to learn how their cities convert waste to energy as one way of fighting air pollution and climate change. Officials from government, municipal energy companies, and waste facilities opened their doors and patiently answered my questions. I went searching for leading-edge technologies but discovered something more valuable: Cutting-edge common sense.
Picture this: A child in Stockholm carefully puts her orange peel into a separate container. Her parents pay less to dispose of this separated waste, which is delivered not to a landfill but to the sewage plant. There, it is co-treated with sewage sludge to produce enough biogas (methane from organic material) to run 50 local buses, a number which will reach 200 by 2010. Landfill pollution is prevented, air pollution is reduced, and because the carbon in organic waste comes from the atmosphere, the biogas does not contribute to climate change.
In Stockholm the combined cost of sewage treatment, garbage, and biofuels for transportation is reduced by this simple, integrated approach. While the monthly cost of secondary treatment in Canada is $10 per home, residents of Stockholm pay $6 for advanced tertiary treatment because revenues from sales of heat and biogas help offset the treatment plant's costs.
In the smaller community of Kristianstad, biogas runs the community's transit and school buses, city trucks, taxis, and several hundred cars. Kristianstad encourages car owners to switch to biogas by subsidizing the conversion cost and providing free parking.
Swedish cities also recover energy from treated sewage with heat pumps, which in turn heat buildings through community energy systems. District heating sells for a flat rate (less than oil), which gives local energy companies an incentive to insulate subscribers' buildings. This leaves more energy in the network, allowing the company to take on more subscribers. In this simple arrangement the economic interests of the company and the environmental interests of the community are aligned. After heat is extracted from sewage by the way, the water is cold enough to run separate district cooling networks which provide air conditioning in offices -- reducing energy use further still.
In Gothenburg, 1,000 people are employed providing renewable energy from local sources, including waste. Greenhouse gases are reduced and sustainable jobs are created.
People in Stockholm have an expression: Waste is a resource in the wrong place. While we ponder a nuclear future, heat pumps could recover enough energy from sewage to heat a third of our buildings. While we subsidize oil companies to dig for fossil fuel, we spend more public money to bury millions of tonnes of organic energy in landfills every year. If we made use of waste energy and materials as Sweden does, our cities could easily meet their Kyoto targets.
Canada and Sweden share cold climates, warm hearts, and a love of hockey. But on the score of fighting pollution with intelligence, Sweden leads six-one. Their genius is integrated planning, while we've fragmented our city governments into departmental silos and committees, obscuring the big picture. Our politicians struggle with issues of sewage, energy, climate change, transportation and waste separately, and the costs add up. It's unclear who profits from this arrangement, but taxpayers and the environment pay the price.
Senior government may set policy, but in the end we're the architects of our communities, and planet-saving changes will begin here. Vancouver is dithering over upgrades to secondary treatment for the Iona and Lions Gate plants. Victoria is drafting plans for sewage treatment, but it's too early to know if a truly integrated approach will be taken.
Today our cities have a unique opportunity, and we must urge our councilors to learn from Sweden's ecological ingenuity. We can't afford anything less.
Stephen Salter has a background in energy and the environment, and is a volunteer with the Georgia Strait Alliance and the TBuck Suzuki Environmental Foundation.
© (c) CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.
Después de leer el artículo, es necesario plantearse qué tipo de medidas o propuestas pueden surgir con la actual gestión de los ayuntamientos -al menos en el caso de Vacarisses- en lo referente al tratamiento de residuos, eficiencia energética, etc. En una reunión con una de las técnicas del departamento de medio ambiente, nos estuvo exponiendo las diferentes iniciativas que se están llevando a cabo en Vacarisses en este campo, los beneficios de estas, y en general cómo se realiza la gestión de residuos. Nuestra sorpresa fue cuando le preguntamos por el presupuesto que se destinaba a estas acciones, los ingresos por impuestos con los que se contaba, etc. y su respuesta fue que ella no manejaba este tipo de cosas, que nos dirigiéramos al departamento de finanzas.
Cómo se puede gestionar bien, tomar las decisiones y emprender las medidas necesarias y pertinentes sin tener una concepción global y sin saber cómo financiarlo?
Investigando sobre éste ámbito para el desarrollo del proyecto, hemos encontrado muchísimos lugares que han llegado a ser pioneros en eficiencia energética, gestión de residuos o conciencia ecológica, ya sea a pequeña escala, cómo algunos municipios, o gran escala, cómo todo un país.
Todos éstos presentaban algo en común; la eficiencia que les caracteriza, tanto ecológica como medioambientalmente hablando, pasaba por la conexión y la interrelación de distintos ámbitos. Unas medidas generaban un beneficio, éste se invertía en otras medidas y así sucesivamente. La cuestión es conseguir cerrar círculos, para que no haya pérdidas de ningún tipo y todo lo que se produce sea eficiente completamente.
La coyuntura económica actual y la creciente preocupación por la sostenibilidad del planeta, llevan indiscutiblemente hacia un camino en el que las energías renovables estén en primera línea, que el uso de los combustibles fósiles se reduzca al máximo antes de llegar al agotamiento de los recursos, que se aprovechen al máximo los recursos renovables que ofrece la naturaleza. Un camino en el que no haya desechos, desperdicios, en el que todo se aproveche al máximo para así crear círculos eficientes, tanto económicamente como ambientalmente.
Suecia es uno de estos lugares pioneros, es el ejemplo a seguir, tanto en Canadá, cómo menciona el artículo, cómo -porqué no- en Vacarisses. Dos escalas muy distintas pero en el problema de la sostenibilidad la más pequeña actuación es necesaria y bienvenida.
A continución está el link de donde se ha obtenido;
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