Mobile recycling centres a possible solution in Stockholm

DenCity

The mobile recycling centre in Gothenburg is part of the DenCity project. This project involves more than 30 organisations from the city authority, the business community and the academic world which are developing and testing sustainable transport and logistics solutions.

One important component of sustainable urban development is to take effective solutions that have been developed in one city and test and implement them in other cities in order to make a greater impact. A good example of this is the project that Sweco is responsible for, which is introducing a recycling barge not only in Gothenburg but also now in Stockholm.

“It’s great to see a development where cities are making the most of the opportunities not only to transport passengers on the water, but also to create new services on or near the water for residents, which make their lives easier when it comes to recycling. DenCity3 has shown that the residents are interested in recycling and committed to it, providing that we make it easy for them to do it right,” explained Anders Forsberg, project leader for CLOSER and for DenCity. 

Stockholm

“The city of Stockholm wants to investigate what is needed to set up mobile recycling centres that involve a barge with containers for recycling which berths at selected quays. There are more than 50 quays in the city of Stockholm and we have carried out an assessment to see which of them are suitable. The quays must be easily accessible for residents and in a location where a lot of people live. We have also checked that there aren’t any barriers which prevent people from walking to the site and leaving their recycling. On the basis of these criteria, we identified ten suitable quays in Stockholm,” said Thomas Sjöström, project leader at Sweco.

Pop-up recycling is an initiative of the city of Stockholm to help residents to manage their lives without needing access to a car. In the past there were special rooms for large items of household waste in apartment blocks where people could recycle their possessions. However, as this space is now needed for other purposes, the city is focusing on pop-up recycling and possibly also on mobile recycling centres to give a better service to residents and encourage them to recycle.

“We are currently investigating several suitable sites on land to see how we can combine land-based and mobile recycling centres. We should have finished our investigation by August of this year,” said Thomas Sjöström.