Recent reports out of Sweden have shown how effective the country is at managing all household waste, with a short term goal of reusing all waste within 3 years.
Recent reports out of Sweden have shown how effective the country is at managing all household waste.
First of all, there’s the approach to recycling. According to France 24, the Swedish recycling approach is to provide plenty of collection sites in every neighborhood for people to bring their plastic, metal, paper, and glass waste.
And there are many businesses that cater to repairing and reselling electronic products that people in most other countries just dump.
The result is perfectly working computers and DVD players at highly affordable prices.
But what about all the other non-recyclable waste?
Believe it or not, but only 1% of it ends up in landfill sites. According to France 24, Sweden has become so efficient at using incinerators for heat and energy production, that they now import almost 1.5 million tons of waste each year.
And they get paid for taking on this waste from other countries. This has drastically driven down heating and electricity costs in a country that has very cold and dark winters.
In the capital of Stockholm, one energy plant produces enough heat for 100,000 homes and electricity for 200,000 homes.
The good news is that they use advanced filtration techniques to ensure that there is very little pollution. They have even set their own pollution standards which are twice as strict as EU mandates.
The short term goal is to reuse all waste within 3 years with no use of toxic landfills at all.
Watch the full video from France 24 below:
Waste management is a great way to save our environment. Great piece of information.