Swedish embassy to harvest 10.5 mn litres of rain water

The Swedish embassy here Wednesday completed the final phase of construction of its Rain Water Harvesting System which was inaugurated by Sweden's former prime minister Goran Persson.

The rain water harvesting system will help the embassy to harvest 10.5 million litres of rain water annually and save approximately Rs.15-20,00,000 lakh of water costs per annum.

"For Sweden environment, climate change and water are important priorities, as we highly promote all these environmental matters internationally, we have to make sure that we ourselves implement it effectively," Sweden's Ambassador to India Harald Sandberg said.

"Sweden has always advocated the idea of greenery and environmental issues internationally, so we have to make sure that we are the first to take initiatives towards it and implement them effectively," Sandberg told IANS.

He said similar water harvesting projects have been started by the Swedish embassy in Beijing and at the same time all the Swedish embassies around the world have started taking initiatives to keep the embassy premises green and neat.

The embassy has already received the "Green Embassy" award in the year 2012 for its initiatives to keep the embassy premises green.

"The embassy also has a set of solar panels installed in the premises which generates 10 percent of the total consumption of electricity by the embassy," Sandberg said.

"We have already started waste management system to recycle the wastes generated and will further invest to make the embassy premises totally waste free," Sandberg told IANS.