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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: 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.

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  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday December 15 2016, @08:52PM

    by butthurt (6141) on Thursday December 15 2016, @08:52PM (#441773) Journal

    At least part of what they're burning in Sweden is refuse-derived fuel (RDF): after removing recyclable materials (such as gas cylinders) and non-flammable ("inert") materials, such as broken concrete, from a waste stream, the remainder is shredded and sometimes made into pellets. That's what goes into the incinerator--they don't just throw in everything higgledy-piggledy.

    http://mswplant.com/msw-plant/ [mswplant.com]

    Sweden has been getting shipments of RDF from Scotland and there are plans for Guernsey to start shipping it.

    http://www.williamtraceygroup.com/latest/news/327_refuse_derived_fuel_shipment_bound_for_sweden [williamtraceygroup.com]
    http://www.ciwm-journal.co.uk/guernsey-export-refuse-derived-fuel-sweden/ [ciwm-journal.co.uk]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refuse-derived_fuel [wikipedia.org]

    • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday December 15 2016, @08:59PM

      by butthurt (6141) on Thursday December 15 2016, @08:59PM (#441774) Journal

      After posting, I tried to read about the situation in Akron, and found this:

      The city of Akron owns the incinerator, called Recycle Energy Systems (RES), which went on line in June 1979 at a cost of $56 million. This is a refuse derived fuel (RFD) incinerator, that shreds the garbage prior to feeding it into the boilers. This incinerator has suffered numerous explosions, and in 1984, one of the explosions killed 3 workers. The 1984 explosion was caused when toxic-contaminated sawdust in the garbage was ignited by the heat of the boilers [...]

      -- http://www.americanhealthstudies.org/wastenot/wn245.htm [americanhealthstudies.org]