Camelot analyses the concept "the green people's home"

The people's home probably is one of the most frequently utilised poliltical terms in this country; lauched in the spirit of progress after the war and thereafter continually repeated by politicians which have confessed the idea of the welfare state, but still primarily associated with the person who first pronounced it - Per Albin Hansson. As of today, the concept has lost at least some of its previous magic, which may be explained by the fact that the people's home in the sense a decent residential and living standard for all, in general is being taken for granted. This however raises the question whether it might not any more be sufficient to simply extend the content of the traditional people's home, but instead revise the basic idea. In this connection it might well be, that the thought of the "green poeple's home" may contribute to the necessary renewal and already back in 2004, Göran Persson launched this concept, as a part of the ideological development of the party.

In the memoirs of Tage Erlander, there is an episode where an American journalist had noted that the clothing style in Stockholm had reached a very decent level, which he took as an indication that Sweden was a well-developed country. Erlander did then argue that this appeared to be a dubious way of doing the evaluation and instead in the spirit of the people's home suggested that standard of the appartments was the truly relevant measure. In our days, when the residential standard generally is on an evenly high level, we need new dimensions to quantify the level of civilisation and in that connection the degree of realisation of the circulation society, appears to be a highly interesting variable. However this is a multidimensional parametre and in order to get an apprehension of the state of the country in the regard of source separation, knowledge of the collection- and recycling results for a number of different material types will be required, such as different kinds of packages, bulky waste, organic waste and not to forget hazardous waste. Thus the evaluation is siginificantly more complex than when it is about determining the residential standard, which be easily defined as the number of rooms or the area per capita.


On this picture there is, what adhering to current ministerial jargon, would most likely be referred to as a "high-level-skiff", belonging to a property, which was in 1953 left to the Swedish government, which is being employed for interlocutive rowing for statesmen. The receiver declared sceptic to the inclination of the American press, to in their European reporting regard clothing style as a level indicator of the society, and instead, in the spirit of the people's home, proposed an evaluation based on living standard

Of course it is possible to extend the limits of the people's home in the sense living standard, but somewhere there is limit, where further standard improvements on the margin to the degree exceed what could be considered a decent basic standard, that the whole idealistic core of the project is being lost and it is then that the thought of the green people's home arises, whose purpose is to renew the original idea of the people's home rather by deepening it than by allowing too much of inflation in the basic material conditions. The green people's home is about digging where one stands, by starting to deal with the environmental issue wihtin the four walls of the home, rather than being horrified by the gigantic environmental problems in the big world, about which media reports.

At the same time, it is a way of counteracting the clichéification of the people's home metaphore, which has come to be employed all too carelessly. One of several current examples of this, is that an interior design store on Tegnérgatan, which Camelot Consulting passes on its way to the central library of Stockholm, has adopted the name "The people's home", probably aiming at gaining the status as the preferred supplier of furniture, for the people's home. Ernst Wigforss already warned for all too much of material influences on the people's home idea, which is demonstrated e.g. by a few reservations in the final sections of his memoirs, where he states that the reform instigators must not "exaggerate the value of exterior changes in the lives of people."



The creators of the old and the new people's home. To the left Per-Albin Hansson who first launched the idea; to the right Göran Persson, who brought the people's home into the new century



To some extent the people's home is the Social Democarat equivalent of the concept the small world of the non-socialists. The people's home has the same relationship to the welfare state as the small world to the big world in the conservative rhetoric. The conservatives often emphasize the role of the small world when it comes to issues such as health and other care, but not to the same extent accentuate its importance when it comes to environmental issues. To some extent this may not be an inclination specifically among the non-socialists, since it is easy for everybody, provided the gigantic proportions of the global environmental problems, to lose faith in the importance of the contribution of the individual. This is a weakness which significantly worsens the possibilities to deal with the environmental problems of our time and the green people's home is an approach to help the citizen regain his faith, that it is possible to by means of common efforts attain environmental goals, like it in the preceeding century was possible to build the people's home from a material point of view.

The rhetoric in connection to the green people's home however is not as confrontative. Let alone that it is important to by means of legislation ensure that producers take their part of the responsibility by menas of so called producers' liability systems, but municipalities and individuals will always be the central agents in order to create a functioning green people's home. In a way the required efforts and the time dedicated to complying with the obligations implied by the green people's home can be seen as a form av taxation. In the same way as the classical people's home required and still requires common sacrifices in the form of financial taxation, the green people's home requires its tribute in the form of special care in the kitchen as well as the work transporting each respective fraction to its correct destination; let us call it a temporal taxation.



The may-pole, a traditional floristic ornament of the people's home and thereby its season specific frame. After the party, the source separation principle will be practiced. The skeleton can be re-used in one-year-cycles, whereas the decorative elements are being added to the amount of garden waste





Let alone that the compliance cannot be controlled in the same way as the normal taxation, but nevertheless it is possible to put higher demands than today on the households. This can be done in several ways, for example by introducing a legal duty to separate hazardous waste, which has been discussed for long, or by means of various economic incentives, such as a weight based tarif, which reward the correct behaviour. In Norway it has grown more common to at the recycling centres put a fee on the landfill fraction, but receiving other fractions for free. Another example is the rather widespread fee discount for households practicing garden composting. The ideal would of course be to install a heavy metal and chemical detector in the vehicles in order to reveal the source separation cheating, but even if this still is far away, it is perfectly possible to counteract the cheating more effectively than today. Even if the green people's home may appear as an entirely new dimension, it is always important not to make things all too complicated. Why not create a simple and robust definition of the green people's home in material terms, by adding so called source separation utensils in the form av appropriate plastic containers for the various fraction to the basic standard of the green people's home. Once this has become a standard gadget in Swedish homes, much should be achieved already.


The practical issues must not be neglected. The sink perspective is key and the installation of adquate source separation utensils in Swedish homes is the first step towards the realisation of the green people's home



Another way of creating a more unambiguous definition of the concept in question, would be to focus on the total recycling degree, that is the total amount of household waste going to recycling. All around Europe, municipalities are fighting to reach the goal of a 50% recycling degree, that is 50% of the total waste quantity which is sent to other treatment than landfill and combustion. The green people's home must however of course aim higher than this. In that connection the 50% recycling degree is rather to be seen as a point of departure for stepwise increases. In the same way as the milestones of the gradual improvement of the living standard could be seen as the number of rooms, it is the next 10 percentage mark, which at every point in time is the goal towards which the waste management politics is pointing. The 50 percent level can to some extent be compared to the national agreement for farm workers, which stipulated a minimum livling area of 35 square metres for family residences, which came to be a starting point for the improvement of living standard, but today appears to be rather remote and not very impressive.

In a way, the people's home metaphore appears to be even more excellent when it comes to the ecological visions thant the economic ones. An important difference though is that whereas the old people's home is about distribution, the new is about consolidation, even if it in both cases is abouth in a pioneer spirit creating the future society. The people's home ideologists have frequently made use of the statement, which has been attributed to lord Bacon: "Prosperity is like manure, it is of no use, as long as it isn't distributed". In the very same fashion one could say that the recyclable waste is like the havest. It is useless, unless it is being collected.

But gently flows the river Don, and the targeted convergence towards the green people's home ideal is therefore most likely a matter at least of decades, even if as time passes, we will probably come to look upon today's clumsy source separation efforts like we today look upon the cramped housing-accomodation, which lies less than a century back in time. The posterity will most likely be amazed by the rudimentary procedures of today, like we today find it hard to perceive the connection, between the more or less complete people's home, in which we are living, and its various preliminary stages. Soon enough, the current imperfections will probably be seen as nothing but the delay effects of industrialism.



Gently flows the fourth longest river of Europe Don, yet today, just like the waste on its way, hopefully to recycling




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