Empty Offices in the Swedish Summer

Time? 3:40pm

Last email arrived?  1:37pm

Over two hours ago! In Space, no one can hear you scream.

Help, I’m trapped in a Swedish office and 75% of my co-workers have left on vacation!

Empty desks where I work...

Wow, it sure is empty here. I ride the empty subway cars to work and then I work 8 hours in a nearly empty office. Even though there are roughly 25 people here at any given time, I can’t see them without heading down a long hallway because my desk happens to be at the other end of the hall from those who are not on vacation at this time.

I’ve never experienced anything like this. The vacation time is substantially shorter in the US and I’ve never worked anywhere in which the whole office emptied out. (I was lucky if I got 2 weeks in the US, here I get 5 weeks, although one of those weeks is in compensation for not receiving overtime.)

No one in any of the conference rooms...

I tried to prepare myself for it. I knew I was taking my vacation unnaturally early (mid-June to mid-July) on account of family coming to visit but I didn’t quite realize how strange it would feel when I returned to an empty office.

It’s great for my personal productivity because there are a lot fewer distractions and “fires to put out” but it sure is lonely...

Will the last one out of Sweden please turn off the lights?

Recycling Adventures in Eskilstuna

Recycling is taken very seriously in Sweden which is pretty cool. I have seen it handled differently in different areas of Sweden. In Uppsala, my friends work very hard to compost the food scraps, and sort through plastic and glass that can be returned for the deposit, plastic and glass that should just be recycled, newspapers separated from other paper packing materials, egg cartons, milk cartons, etc.

I am on my summer vacation and just spent a week in a small town located about 45 minutes west of Stockholm, near Eskilstuna. They have a recycling system there that involves sorting everything into different colored plastic bags. The bags are then tied off and all are put into the same trash bin which is set out at the curb and collected once a week.

I found it was actually a lot easier than sorting the trash in Uppsala where everyone tries to figure out their own system and it's awkward. Also, there you then have to take the assorted recycling in your car or on foot to the nearest recycling bins.

The Eskilstuna system, which is managed by Eskilstuna Energi & Miljö (website only in Swedish) is so simple, they wrote the directions explaining which color goes with which recyling in the form of a toddler's board book (a thick-paged book, the kind toddlers gnaw on when they are not reading). Here are a few pictures:

The book explaining the color-coded recycling system was designed to look like a toddler's board book.

"It's childishly simple to color sort!" (wait, is "childishly" a real word?)

Pages explaining what goes into the green bag and what goes into the orange bag.

You can ask for more bags at any time. I believe there are six colors used to split the trash into 6 different kinds of recycling. You are to use a regular, recycled grocery bag for the few things that fit into none of the categories.

It takes a little time to learn what goes where and one must dedicate an area somewhere for all these bags. They were just in the cabinet under the sink where I stayed. Some were held open by small containers and some were just sitting on the floor of the cabinet. The friend that owns the house where we stayed rents out part of the house in the summer, usually to people from Germany or Poland. These guests have to learn the system as well. But hey, it's childishly simple in any language!