LAWRENCE: Swedish student in local study

By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
Oscar Koohler
Student
8STUDENT
Lea KahnStaff Writer
One of the first things that struck Swedish graduate student Oscar Koohler as he was planning his trip to Lawrence Township was the overall inefficiency of mass transportation in Mercer County.
Mr. Koohler, who is spending three weeks in Lawrence studying "best practices" in sustainability, searched for hotels within a 10-mile radius of the township. He found plenty of them, but discovered that it would take about two hours to reach the Municipal Building by bus.
In Sweden, it would have taken about 20 minutes for a similar journey by mass transportation — not two hours or so, he said. Fortunately, arrangements were made for him to stay with a family on Titus Avenue. He can ride a bicycle from his host’s home to the Municipal Building.
"It is very clear that the infrastructure (in the United States) is set up around the car," he said Monday afternoon. Riding his bicycle to the Quaker Bridge Mall and the Mercer Mall was challenging, he said, adding that the roads are not meant to accommodate anything other than cars or trucks.
Mr. Koohler’s visit to Lawrence, which is one of 139 towns certified by Sustainable Jersey, is being sponsored by the Swedish-American Green Alliance.
The alliance is a joint effort between the American embassy in Stockholm and the Sustainable Sweden Association, which — like its counterparts, Sustainable Lawrence and Sustainable Jersey — promotes sustainability, or not using more natural resources than can be replaced.
Mr. Koohler is enrolled in a five-year program in sustainable energy engineering at Lulea University of Technology in Sweden. That is also where he learned about the Swedish-American Green Alliance’s program, which sends five Swedish students to cooperating American communities for three weeks to study "best practices" in sustainability.
The other four students, who attend other universities in Sweden, are spending three weeks in Portland, Ore., Washburn, Wisc., Madison, Wisc., and Tallahassee, Fla. Three of those four communities have participated in the Swedish-American Green Alliance. This is Lawrence’s first time to take part in it.
"(The aim of the three-week program) is to study best practices in sustainability — the things that work best," he said. For example, how does Lawrence handle specific sustainability issues? What works in Lawrence might not work in New York City, he said.
"It is a great opportunity to (gain) another perspective (on sustainability)," he said. "There are things you do in the United States, but not in Sweden. The goal is to bring ideas to the United States from Sweden, and (to bring back) ideas from the United States to Sweden. It’s a two-way exchange."
Between now and Aug. 28, Mr. Koohler will visit Zone 7, Trenton Biofuels and AgriAark to explore how they deal with sustainability issues. Zone 7 is a business that makes it easy for restaurateurs to use locally grown and organically grown food, while AgiArk focuses on "redeveloping urban industrial sites into self-sustaining, multi-use developments," according to its web site, www.agriark.com.
Mr. Koohler also will meet with representatives of Sustainable Jersey, and visit Terhune Orchard in Lawrence. Pam Mount, who is a co-owner of the Cold Soil Road farm, is the chairman of Sustainable Jersey’s board of trustees. She is also one of the co-founders of Sustainable Lawrence, which was formed in 2006.
Since Mr. Koohler arrived in Lawrence last week, he has spent some time with Noemi de la Puente, the founder of NJThinkOutsideTheBag, which aims to discourage the use of single-use shopping bags through measures such as charging a fee for them.
In Sweden, Mr. Koohler said, merchants charge a 25-cent fee to customers who do not bring a reusable bag for their purchases. The fee is "an easier way to persuade people to change their habits" and bring a reusable bag, instead of relying on plastic bags, he said.
Plastic is unavoidable, but it can be recycled. It can be made into fabric, he said. There is also a fee on plastic bottles and aluminum cans in Sweden. The fee is refundable to the persons who collect the bottles and cans — similar to a deposit on them.
Heat is an issue for Swedes, he said. Lulei is near the Arctic Circle. Last winter, the temperature dropped as low as 33 degrees below zero. That’s why there is such an emphasis on providing heat in Lulei and in Sweden, he said.
But instead of a boiler in each house to produce heat, there is a central boiler operated by the city that provides heat to all homes. For example, excess energy generated by a steel-manufacturing factory heats water that is fed to radiators in all of the buildings in Lulei, he said.
There is also a movement afoot for new buildings to be able to produce more energy than they use, through measures such as the installation of solar photo-voltaic panels and wind turbines, Mr. Koohler said. An increasing number of new buildings incorporate those technologies to generate more energy than they consume, he added.
"You can always do more (for sustainability)," Mr. Koohler said. "The worst thing one can do is to say, ‘It’s enough.’ You can always do more in almost every aspect. If we had that (attitude) in the 1950s, we would still be driving bad cars. You can always do better."