Why you can never find garbage in Sweden

    Even as Indian cities like Bangalore slowly transform into one huge garbage dump thanks to faulty civic planning, Sweden finds itself with a unique problem on its hands: there’s no garbage left in the country. The Scandinavian nation has been ‘importing’ trash from neighbouring Norway to feed its waste-to-energy programme that provides, through incineration, heat and electricity to thousands of households in the country with a population of 9.5 million.

    The story first broke on the American public radio organization Public Radio International and has since been picked up by a number of green blogs and websites. Sweden’s superefficient waste segregation and recycling systems have made sure only about 4% of the country’s waste ends up in landfills.
 

    So how did Sweden get so good at waste management, and what can other countries learn from it? Firstly, Sweden started putting effective systems in place from the early 1990s and took a holistic approach, through policy changes, engagement with industry and awareness programmes, to reach out to all stakeholders of Swedish society. Producers were made responsible for dealing with several categories of waste. Landfill bans and taxes were introduced, and targets set set for increased recycling. More than 90% of household waste in Sweden is recycled, reused or recovered.
 

    By law, companies are responsible for collecting the entire waste-stream stemming from their products, either on their own or through public or private contractors, writes Magnus Schönning in the Toronto Star. There is a strong economic incentive for companies to produce less waste from products and product packaging. Sweden has encouraged heavy recycling by combining economic incentives, such as garbage collection fees, with easy access to recycling stations and public awareness campaigns, says the Toronto Star report. In 2005, Sweden made it illegal to landfill organic waste. Instead, the waste is biologically treated to make compost, biogas and fertilizer.
 

    However, the bulk of the waste is converted into energy through processes that have been refined over the years to be as clean and environmentally sustainable as possible. In fact, Sweden claims that the damage to the environment caused by the release of dioxins, harmful chemicals released when waste is incinerated, is less than the damage caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
 

    Thanks to these proactive measures, landfilling of household waste fell from 1,380,000 tonnes in 1994 to 380,000 tonnes in 2004. Around 1.3 million tonnes of materials and 5.7 TWh (terawatt hour) of energy in the form of heat and electricity were recovered from household waste in 2004: an increase of 140% and 70%, respectively, since 1994. Surely, Sweden is showing Asia's growing cities how to make a clean sweep.
 

    For more: pri.org; naturvardsverket.se 

 

TALKING TRASH: Sweden generated 118 million tonnes of waste in 2010