”China is in the process of establishing waste water treatment plants and in some areas they are in use already, thus, it looks quite new, but the advanced idea of making constant progress in building new areas is worthy of learning for us,” said Liu after visiting the Stockholm Royal Seaport, a new sustainable city district in Stockholm.

”It is such an uncomparable experience, I shall have a very good report to my boss when I go back, ” said Ms Li Yunxia from the same company.

Mr. Qin Zhihui, Manager of Technology said it is such an great inspiration for him to visit Sweden.

”I think it is not that easy for us to reach such a level in a very short time, but we are going to make more efforts towards a goal of reducing the air pollution and water pollution,” said Qin who has visited Hammarbysjöstad, Enköping water treatment plant and rain water park as well as Stockholm Royal Seaport.

Xuefei Chen Axelsson, Liu Yongqian, Eric Freudal, Li Yunxia and
Qin Zhihui visited Hammarbysjöstad on Oct. 15, 2014.
Photo by Zhao Jian.

The delegation has seen the rain water collection system and waste recycling system in Hammarbysjöstad after hearing a presentation by Xuefei Chen Axelsson, CEO of Sweden-China Bridge and a scholar focusing on leadership of sustainable development.

They also met Ulf Hallberg project officer of Water and Waste Water Department of Enköping Municipality.

Hallberg said their waste water treatment plant was built in the 1960s and they are planning to build a new advanced water treatment plant in 10 years while the current site will be a new real estate development area.

”The water park was built about 15 years ago, at that time, we also faced some contraversy, some people worried that there would be mosquitos, but when it was finished till now, no one complained any more because now it has become a park for children to play, for adults to walk and for birds to stay, in winter it attracts a lot of birds watcher too,” said Hallberg proudly.

He explained that by digging deep and shallow ditches, let dirty rain water flow through the ditches and wetlands where there are many kinds of plants and through a week or ten days, the polluted water natually becomes very clean. He took a glass and showed the delegation how it was like at the beginning and at the end. I tasted the water, and it didn’t have any taste any more. Very clean.

With such a natural way of cleaning rain water, it might be a great inspiration for China to learn.

In Stockholm Royal Seaport, a 2.0 version of Hammarbysjöstad, one is going to use a lot of more advanced standards.

Xuefei Chen Axelsson, Bo Hallqvist, Qin Zhihui, Liu Yongqian and
Li Yunxia visited Stockholm Royal Seaport on Oct. 17, 2014.

”We build them in 15 years, and one after another, we don’t build them all at the same time because it is also a learning process, every kind of material used for building the new apartment will be documented and assessed in the future, so that the next phase of the project will learn from the previous ones, our goal is to make the area carbon neutral in 2030,” said Bo Hallqvist, Information Officier at Stockholm Royal Seaport Innovation Center.

In addition to the visits relating to waste and sewage, the delegation also visited solar electric charging stations installed by Solelia Greentech Company in KTH campus and Sundbyberg Municipality.

They also visited a private apartment to see how the household waste was separated and recycled on Oct. 17, 2014.

Behind them is the window where the big vacuum pipe will go in
to the waste store house and absorb all the combustible waste to
the big truck using biogas to transport them to the waste burning
plant in Högadalen in South Stockholm.

Photo and text by Xuefei Chen Axelsson.