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posted by on Saturday December 10 2016, @06:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the less-is-more dept.

Sweden is so good at recycling that, for several years, it has imported rubbish from other countries to keep its recycling plants going. Less than 1 per cent of Swedish household waste was sent to landfill last year or any year since 2011.

Well, it's not quite so idyllic as that (it sounds as if they're incinerating), but it's far, far ahead of the competition. As reported in The Independent (from a solidly British perspective, naturally) :

Why are we sending waste to Sweden? Their system is so far ahead because of a culture of looking after the environment. Sweden was one of the first countries to implement a heavy tax on fossil fuels in 1991 and now sources almost half its electricity from renewables.

[...] Over time, Sweden has implemented a cohesive national recycling policy so that even though private companies undertake most of the business of importing and burning waste, the energy goes into a national heating network to heat homes through the freezing Swedish winter. “That's a key reason that we have this district network, so we can make use of the heating from the waste plants. [...]”

So they don't actually recycle, but they barely need landfills, and “In the UK, each local authority has its own system, making it difficult for residents to be confident about what they can recycle and where.” Sounds like the U.S., dunnit?


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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @07:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 10 2016, @07:15PM (#439766)

    Oh, i've been mailing my trash there, because that's what sweden is.

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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 10 2016, @09:20PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday December 10 2016, @09:20PM (#439801) Homepage

    Yes, the Middle-East has been sending all their trash there. Too bad that a society with the world's best potential has been reduced to a garbage dump thanks to Islamic immigration. Merkel is ruining Europe and nobody is doing anything about it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @01:04AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @01:04AM (#439850)

      Thanks for your contribution Mr. Breivik, I didn't realize you had Internet access.

  • (Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Sunday December 11 2016, @12:13AM

    by art guerrilla (3082) on Sunday December 11 2016, @12:13AM (#439840)

    i think the more interesting angle might be *HOW* does sweden incinerate their trash (presumably a high-temp situation) and capture 'all' (sic) the eee-vil stuff going up the smokestack...
    we usaians pwomised to do that once upon a time in liverpool ohio, and i don't believe it ever achieved the filtration levels it promised...
    (not to mention, okay, having captured all this eee-vil crap in some system, what do you do with it ? ? ?)

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @01:55AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11 2016, @01:55AM (#439857)

      I don't think you know what "sic" means.

      • (Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Sunday December 11 2016, @02:37AM

        by art guerrilla (3082) on Sunday December 11 2016, @02:37AM (#439866)

        "Sic may also be used derisively, to call attention to the original writer's spelling mistakes or erroneous logic"

        in this case, i use it not exactly derisively, but that saying 'all' doesn't necessarily mean 'all'... it generally means 'acceptable limits of toxins', which is not really 'all', but we accept in a manner of speaking that below a certain threshold will constitute 'all'...

        more importantly than the grammar policing, is WHAT ARE THE SWEDES DOING to get -*ahem*- 'all' (sic) of the eee-vil stuff out of the smokestack...

        i also commonly use it when talking about "...'our' (sic) gummint...", because -ob- it ain't 'our' gummint at all... i guess theoretically you could say that is the original meaning of 'sic', as far as reporting it directly without correction : i *repeat without correction* the form of the state's propaganda that it is constantly inveighing the bromide of 'the people's (ie 'our') gummint', and am signifying both my (skeptical) repeating of that bromide, as well as my derisive take with the (sic) modifier... of course, i am also using it punnily as indicating 'our sick gummint'...

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @05:29PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 12 2016, @05:29PM (#440458)

          Nice explanation - unfortunately, it just confirms that you don't know what the means and/or its purpose. '(sic)' is used when quoting something to show that it is an accurate quote of something incorrect, so you can't use it when introducing information for the first time. An example of an accurate use would be to quote your entire post and follow it with '(sic)'

    • (Score: 1) by Francis on Sunday December 11 2016, @02:00AM

      by Francis (5544) on Sunday December 11 2016, @02:00AM (#439860)

      They don't need to capture it to be carbon neutral. Most of the organic material in the waste was recently removed from the air. What's more, if they don't burn that to heat things, then how else are they going to heat things?

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by theronb on Sunday December 11 2016, @03:27AM

      by theronb (2596) on Sunday December 11 2016, @03:27AM (#439870)

      Akron, OH tried it, too but had problems with the kiln exploding from time to time because of failure to remove various items in the waste stream - not munitions, but things like compressed gas cylinders and wads of solvent soaked rags. I don't know how they were doing with emissions controls but the explosions were troublesome enough that they shut down the system.