As a result of its industrial heritage and its particular topography, the Sundsvall area has experienced a range of environmental problems, and indeed had come to be known as the ‘dirty man’ of Sweden. The main environmental problems have been:

Sometimes, there may be a tendency to put rather an importance on the fact that a City has been carrying out an eco-audit than on the aims an eco-audit should pursuit.

The City of Sundsvall is an important example for the fact that a city can reach the aims of an eco-audit:

without undergoing a standardised certification procedure.

In contrary, the Sundsvall experience is characterised by an exceptional drive (verve) movement from the city’s employees keeping the environmental issue high on the list.

There were thus many incentives for the City of Sundsvall to enhance its environmental situation. But a very strong impetus for the auditing work started later on came through a project initiated by the Swedish government, thought to be a kind of experimental policy in order to find out how the environmental situation of a Sundsvall and the neighbouring city Timrå can be changed and to possibly transfer these experiences to other Swedish cities.

A “Commission of Inquiry” was set up for this purpose should thus take initiatives and propose measures which would substantially improve the area’s situation within ten years. A number of projects were started and some 30 individual reports prepared, covering very different topics.

Most of the emphasis was on identifying environmental problems, forecasting environmental trends and suggesting new initiatives. Two of the reports focused particularly on ‘environmental auditing’ in both private and the public sector.

The final report was aimed at the general public, politicians and local companies. It was presented to the Government in 1990 and after period of consultation, most of recommendations were accepted by the municipality in 1991.

The seeds of Sundsvall’s eco-management approach had thus been sown. This approach did not consist of a normalised auditing and certification procedure as Sundsvall was one of the first cities doing so and they could not rely on already existing rules or procedures. Instead, most of the measures taken were initiated by the employees in the City and its different workplaces. Nonetheless, they essentially pursued the same goals as eco-auditing itself: improving the environmental situation both in the city and in its workplaces.

The following measures were undertaken in Sundsvall:

Sundsvall shows that a municipality can control and influence its impacts on the environment without a standardised procedure. Originally stemming from a government initiative, the City of Sundsvall engaged itself very strongly afterwards.

Very different projects have been carried out which all served the purpose of "greening" the work of the administration and its companies. Their original approach also included training of the city's employees and the information of the public.

Seen in a functional perspective, Sundsvall fulfilled the aims of the EMAS or ISO 14000 procedures in a "bottom-up approach" and went even a little further in defining a green purchasing strategy.

The budget for the project was set at 1,37 Mio. Euro (based on an exchange rate of 1 Euro = 9,49 SEK), including money from research agencies and industry and a time of 21 months was allocated for its work to be completed.

The city of Sundsvall
Marie-Louise Henriksson, tel. +46 60 19 10 00

//1991

case

Urban Policy > Urban environment

Environmental sustainability