In Sweden, cold water out of a tap is classed as a food, which means that you can drink it. Hot water out of a tap should only be used for washing clothes and dishes, and for taking a bath. You should not drink water from a hot water tap, as it might contain a little copper and other metals from the pipes.

Please sort your waste. You can sort packaging made from metal and plastic, newspapers, cardboard boxes and glass. ”Dangerous” waste includes left-over chemicals and oils, old electronic equipment and light bulbs of all kinds. You can find sorting points at most supermarkets in Linköping. You can also leave your waste at the Malmen, Ullstämma and Gärstad recycling centres. All waste sorted at source is used to make new products.

All waste which cannot be recycled, as well as household waste and industrial waste, is used to produce energy when we burn it at the Gärstadverket waste centre. This waste is used to produce electricity and district heating.

More than 90 percent of the houses and flats in Linköping are heated by district heating, which also provides their hot water. District heating means that water, which has been heated to around 100°C at Gärstadverket , is pumped around Linköping and into people’s homes through a 500 kilometre network of pipes. When the water returns to Gärstadverket, it is heated up again. The use of district heating means that the environment and air in the town is much better than if everyone used their own boilers and fireplaces to heat their homes and water.

Linköping has Sweden’s largest biogas plant. Biogas is produced from leftovers from the food industry, including slaughter waste. The biogas, methane, is produced when the waste is left to break down in a special rotting chamber. After it has been cleaned, the biogas is a very good fuel for cars, buses and trucks. Today, around 70 buses, 1,200 cars, taxis and waste trucks in Linköping run on biogas. There are five biogas filling stations in Linköping. The bio fertiliser, which is the solid waste left at the end of the rotting process, is an ideal fertiliser which can be used as a replacement for imported fertilisers for growing crops.

All waste water from households and industrial operations is purified at the sewage treatment plant. This includes water used for dishwashing and clothes washing, and in toilets and washbasins.  Rainwater from roofs and streets is not purified, but runs straight into the nearest stream, river or lake.

It is important that the toilet is used only for human waste from people going to the toilet and for toilet paper – no other rubbish, either liquid or solid, should be put in the toilet. Please remember that nothing just disappears! Every week, our workers have to clear blockages in the sewage network, and they remove more than 10 tonnes of rubbish. It is important that the water leaving the sewage plant is as clean as possible. Our sewage water runs into the Baltic Sea, and will be turned into drinking water in another town or city.