How a small Swedish township got its employees involved in climate action
To get the employees engaged in climate action, the municipality of Mariestad used the Climate Dialogue service to create a contest for the best climate idea.
The winning idea has now been announced — and will be implemented right away.
Mariestad, a municipality of just 24 000 inhabitants at the shore of Sweden’s biggest lake, Vänern, has taken a leading role in regional climate action in Sweden.
Last year. Mariestad opened the world’s first solar-powered hydrogen gas station. It has created Electrivillage, a model area for sustainable development, and it is now building a fossil-free pre-school for 140 children.
In January this year, Mariestad announced a contest for all municipal employees, encouraging them to come up with ideas to make Mariestad more sustainable.
”It’s always hard to reach out in your own organization. So we thought: How can we get our employees to start thinking in climate terms. That’s how we got this idea”, says Susanne Wallner, business strategist in Mariestad.
Mariestad is a Climate Stakeholder Dialogue Partner to We Don’t Have Time. This made it easy for all employees to use the Climate Dialogue platform to post ideas, to read and comment on other ideas, and to vote for their favourites.
In total 200 ideas were posted on Mariestad’s Climate Dialogue page, and Susanne Wallner and her team spent a lot of time not just going through them, but also trying to figure out which ones were possible to implement and which were not.
”We have assessed each one of the ideas, and graded them from 1 to 10 in different criterias to figure out which one might have the best climate impact. It took a lot of time, much more than expected”, she says.
The winning idea turned out to be as simple as effective: To make Mariestad ”Kranmärkt” (tap-marked).
Kranmärkt is a sustainability label for businesses and organizations that choose tap water over bottled water as an environmentally friendly and much more economical choice.
Tap water in Sweden ranks as one of the best in the world. It is fresh, locally sourced and available 24 hours a day. But Swedes still buy a lot of bottled water, which is sometimes transported from other continents. In other words: not sustainable. Producing one litre of bottled water can require 300 times more energy than if you simply tap it up in your kitchen.
”We are really proud of our lake Vänern, and feel that this kind of commitment is in line with who we want to be”, says Susanne Wallner.
On October 16 the surprised winners were celebrated with a special made cake, decorated with a Marzipan water tap.
Water and Sewer Manager Amanda Haglind, member of the five-person winning team, says:
”We’re really glad that our idea won, and that it is going to be implemented right away.”
Now it’s up to the municipal management team to make sure the idea is implemented. Susanne Wallner already has got a lot of ideas on how to do this.
”We have the ’World toilet day’ coming up in November, which we are gonna use to spread awareness on what’s not to flush down the toilet. We’re gonna have a car washing weekend to communicate the environmental benefits of taking your car to the car wash than washing it on the street. We’re also gonna participate in the yearly national contest for best tap water, and use that to create water saving campaigns.”
To spread the climate engagement even further, Mariestad is planning to let all of its citizens come up with climate ideas.
”We haven't yet decided how to go through with it, but we are hoping to make it happen in cooperation with We Don't Have Time”, says Susanne Wallner.
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