GORDON BROWN wants the UK to build eco-towns and has pointed to the example of model developments in Sweden. So how green really are these eco-towns?

Hammarby Sjostad was an athletes’ village planned for the 2004 Olympics. Stockholm’s bid failed, but after investing so much time and money on the scheme the city decided to convert it into a pioneering eco-town of 11,000 homes. The first residents moved in seven years ago, and almost half the homes have been built at a rate that would turn heads in the UK – Greenwich Millennium Village in London counts new homes in hundreds, not thousands. As at Greenwich, Hammarby is built on reclaimed industrial land next to water (“sjostad” means “laketown”). Water underpins landscaping, environmentalism and viability. Whenever you wash or shower, the warmth is extracted from the waste water to power heating via a “heat exchanger”. This also leaves cold water that provides cooling for food stores. It’s part of a technology package licensed as the “Hammarby model”.

The model aims to halve water and energy consumption without using wind turbines or solar panels. Every home is within 25m (82ft) of a trio of stainless-steel pipes that stick out of the ground. These are your bins. Food waste, recyclable papers, plastics and nonrecyclable items are put in bags and sent down a colour-coded chute and sucked to the recycling centre. Nonrecyclable rubbish is burnt, powering heating and the electricity-generating turbines.

The Hammarby homes have no trace of the asceticism associated with eco-villages. Most buildings are apartment blocks. The majority of homes have three bedrooms and are built to generous dimensions: living rooms, at 20 to 25 sq m, are typically twice the UK average. Bathrooms are shower wet rooms that also contain washing machines and tumble dryers (A-rated, of course).

This is eco-living as canny shopping: you choose from a range of high-quality alternatives to dirty carbon living. The question is, to what degree can the UK repeat the Hammarby model by making yesterday’s waste tomorrow’s energy? The current strategy with the Code For Sustainable Homes due to take effect over the next eight years hardly mentions waste and puts its emphasis on limiting energy and water consumption. It’s a hair-shirt strategy compared with the Hammarby model.

The author is chief executive of Design for Homes, a not-for-profit company that promotes the value of good design

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