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Project summary
Name of the case study
Folehaven Green Laundry
Where is it located?
Denmark
What type of activity is it?
The evaluation of a refurbished communal laundry for an existing non-profit housing development. The water from the laundry is cleansed and reused for new
washes, in order to reduce water consumption and to avoid outlet of sewage together with other environmental changes.
Short description of the case study
The laundry is a renovated communal laundry in a non-profit existing housing development. It is designed as a 'green laundry', with a number of environmental features including :
• storm water collection and utilisation,
• local biological treatment of waste water,
• recirculation of water,
• using renewable energy.
The laundry also includes an aquarium and a 'marshland' with fish and turtles, giving the green laundry educational qualities. Due to this new concept, the laundry received massive attention from the media, environmental experts and other non-profit housing associations.
The green laundry
In 2002 the green laundry was evaluated, on environmental, social and economic issues. The evaluation was designed for this specific case, and was not based on a general concept. The evaluation pointed out a number of problems and questioned the environmental benefits, it also encouraged the owners and their consultants to set up an action plan to improve the laundry.
The evaluation report recommended that the green laundry should not be replicated (in the present form) other places. The owners are however proud of the facility, and have gained other benefits from the laundry including positive attention in the media, therefore this might motivate others to creat similar projects.
This includes one of the few evaluations of a "green" project, and it illustrates some of the problems related to such evaluations including a lack of data, disagreements on the results from the initiators etc.. The evaluators have similar experiences from evaluation of other projects.
The PETUS key issues associated with this case study are:
Water - Water resource quality and availability,
Water - Management and conception of urban water infrastructures,
Water - Sustainable management of water in cities,
Energy - The security of energy supply,
Energy - The ownership of renewable energy sources to gain public support,
Green/blue - Green spaces qualitative aspects: improvement of the existing green/blue spaces.
What tools were used to assess sustainability?
Evaluation of the Folehaven Green Laundry
More information