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One of the initial goals of all recycling programs is the minimization of waste entering the landfills, because if you remove all recyclable materials from the trash you’ve got a whole lot less mess to deal with.
Most recycling programs have changed the waste management game quite a bit, reducing the amount of trash that ends up in landfills by 50 percent or more and giving us an abundant supply of recycled materials such as paper pulp, aluminum and glass.
But Sweden, never to be outdone, has made their recycling programs so efficient the country is actually running out of rubbish, so they’ve begun importing trash from other EU countries to keep their recycling plants going:
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. In the southern part of Europe they don’t make use of the heating from the waste, it just goes out the chimney. Here we use it as a substitute for fossil fuel,” Ms Gripwell says.
Ms Gripwall says the aim in Sweden is still to stop people sending waste to recycling in the first place. A national campaign called the “Miljönär-vänlig” movement has for several years promoted the notion that there is much to be gained through repairing, sharing and reusing.
She describes Sweden’s policy of importing waste to recycle from other countries as a temporary situation. “There’s a ban on landfill in EU countries, so instead of paying the fine they send it to us as a service. They should and will build their own plants, to reduce their own waste, as we are working hard to do in Sweden,” Ms Gripwall says.
“Hopefully there will be less waste and the waste that has to go to incineration should be incinerated in each country. But to use recycling for heating you have to have district heating or cooling systems, so you have to build the infrastructure for that, and that takes time,” she adds.
-Via Independent
Source: neatorama