Sweden needs garbage

[FaxModem1]

CSGlobe

Sweden Out of Garbage

Imagine a world where pollution is a non-issue, cities are pristine, healthy environments to live in, and little to no entanglements from discarded trash injures wildlife or clogs the oceans. In Sweden, this is almost a reality, yet it’s causing a paradoxical predicament for the recycle-happy country that relies on waste to heat and provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes.

The Scandinavian nation of more than 9.5 million citizens has run out of garbage; while this is a positive – almost enviable – predicament for a country to be facing, Sweden now has to search for rubbish outside of its borders to generate its waste-to-energy incineration program. It’s namely Norway officials who are now shipping in 80,000 tons of refuse annually to fuel the country with outside waste.

The population’s remarkable pertinacious recycling habits are inspiration for other garbage-bloated countries where the idea of empty landfills is scarce. In fact, only 4 percent of all waste in Sweden is land-filled, a big win for the future of sustainable living. By using its two million tons of waste as energy and scrapping for more outside of its borders, this country is shown in international comparisons to be the global leader in recovering energy in waste. Go Sweden.

Public Radio International has the whole story. This (albeit short-term) solution is even highly beneficial for the Scandinavian country; Norway pays Sweden to take its excess waste, Sweden burns it for heat and electricity, and the ashes remaining from the incineration process, filled with highly polluting dioxins, are returned back to Norway and land filled.

Catarina Ostland, senior advisor for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, suggests that Norway may not be the perfect partner for the trash import-export scheme, however. “I hope that instead we will get the waste from Italy or from Romania or Bulgaria, or the Baltic countries because they landfill a lot in these countries” she tells PRI. “They don’t have any incineration plants or recycling plants, so they need to find a solution for their waste”.

There’s definitely something to be said about being ‘green’. Regardless of its sourcing, hopefully Sweden’s impeccable job of reducing its carbon footprint may serve as an example to other areas of the world that have more than enough trash to utilize and put to sustainable use.

I wonder how green this actually is, as they even state that this causes pollutants when burning the trash. On the plus side, Europe could really clean up.

[Napoleon the Clown]

If nothing else, incinerated trash eats up less space. The biggest "green" part is that they recycle so much of what gets used.

[salm]

Germany has the same problem. We have to import about a million tons of trash per year and the demand is growing. The problem this creates is that there now are financial interests that reqire burning potentially valuable resources making it more difficult to install infrastructure to recycle (as opposed to burn) these resources.

[Eleas]

All will be consigned to the Fire.

[Alyrium Denryle]

CSGlobe

Sweden Out of Garbage

Imagine a world where pollution is a non-issue, cities are pristine, healthy environments to live in, and little to no entanglements from discarded trash injures wildlife or clogs the oceans. In Sweden, this is almost a reality, yet it’s causing a paradoxical predicament for the recycle-happy country that relies on waste to heat and provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes.

The Scandinavian nation of more than 9.5 million citizens has run out of garbage; while this is a positive – almost enviable – predicament for a country to be facing, Sweden now has to search for rubbish outside of its borders to generate its waste-to-energy incineration program. It’s namely Norway officials who are now shipping in 80,000 tons of refuse annually to fuel the country with outside waste.

The population’s remarkable pertinacious recycling habits are inspiration for other garbage-bloated countries where the idea of empty landfills is scarce. In fact, only 4 percent of all waste in Sweden is land-filled, a big win for the future of sustainable living. By using its two million tons of waste as energy and scrapping for more outside of its borders, this country is shown in international comparisons to be the global leader in recovering energy in waste. Go Sweden.

Public Radio International has the whole story. This (albeit short-term) solution is even highly beneficial for the Scandinavian country; Norway pays Sweden to take its excess waste, Sweden burns it for heat and electricity, and the ashes remaining from the incineration process, filled with highly polluting dioxins, are returned back to Norway and land filled.

Catarina Ostland, senior advisor for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, suggests that Norway may not be the perfect partner for the trash import-export scheme, however. “I hope that instead we will get the waste from Italy or from Romania or Bulgaria, or the Baltic countries because they landfill a lot in these countries” she tells PRI. “They don’t have any incineration plants or recycling plants, so they need to find a solution for their waste”.

There’s definitely something to be said about being ‘green’. Regardless of its sourcing, hopefully Sweden’s impeccable job of reducing its carbon footprint may serve as an example to other areas of the world that have more than enough trash to utilize and put to sustainable use.

I wonder how green this actually is, as they even state that this causes pollutants when burning the trash. On the plus side, Europe could really clean up.

Think about what is being burned. Non-recyclable materials. So, some plastics, a large amount of food waste etc. A good chunk of that is carbon neutral, because the CO2 was recently sequestered out of the atmosphere. Once lumped in with everything else, it is still clean in terms of CO2 when compared to using coal or fuel oil.

[Irbis]

“I hope that instead we will get the waste from Italy or from Romania or Bulgaria, or the Baltic countries because they landfill a lot in these countries” she tells PRI. “They don’t have any incineration plants or recycling plants, so they need to find a solution for their waste”.

Think about what is being burned. Non-recyclable materials. So, some plastics, a large amount of food waste etc. A good chunk of that is carbon neutral, because the CO2 was recently sequestered out of the atmosphere. Once lumped in with everything else, it is still clean in terms of CO2 when compared to using coal or fuel oil.

Highlighted problematic part - they intend to import hundreds of thousands of tons of waste from Mediterranean. Or Black Sea, which is even farther. This is most definitely not carbon neutral, unless they intend to use Russian nuclear icebreakers for that.

Speaking of Russia, second largest Russian city with population larger than all of Sweden is right next to largest Swedish port, yet somehow that huge, convenient source that would be most carbon neutral of all options (and Russian landfills I'd suspect to be worse for environment than EU ones) isn't even considered. Instead, they go for Romania. Ecology at its finest.

[Glocksman]

There *could* be issues with using Russian garbage, such as heavy metals concentrations or somesuch.
Or perhaps Putin's Russia just isn't the kind of country that the Swedes want to work with.

[Simon_Jester]

As far as I know, the biggest part of the carbon footprint of shipping fuel isn't the shipping itself; it's the fuel. Shipping carbon-neutral fuel half way across Europe might STILL be better than burning coal or oil, especially since that coal or oil would probably have to be shipped long distances anyway.

[Irbis]

There *could* be issues with using Russian garbage, such as heavy metals concentrations or somesuch.

Then they are in for a surprise with all of the above countries. Especially Italy.

Or perhaps Putin's Russia just isn't the kind of country that the Swedes want to work with.

They mention they want to go for worst landfills first, with as low footprint as possible, then ignore best combination. Not wanting to deal with Putin? Maybe, but since when local trash companies have anything to do with who is in power?

Shipping carbon-neutral fuel half way across Europe might STILL be better than burning coal or oil

But it is not better than shipping it across narrow bay of something as small as Baltic, which was my point.

[Alyrium Denryle]

“I hope that instead we will get the waste from Italy or from Romania or Bulgaria, or the Baltic countries because they landfill a lot in these countries” she tells PRI. “They don’t have any incineration plants or recycling plants, so they need to find a solution for their waste”.

Think about what is being burned. Non-recyclable materials. So, some plastics, a large amount of food waste etc. A good chunk of that is carbon neutral, because the CO2 was recently sequestered out of the atmosphere. Once lumped in with everything else, it is still clean in terms of CO2 when compared to using coal or fuel oil.

Highlighted problematic part - they intend to import hundreds of thousands of tons of waste from Mediterranean. Or Black Sea, which is even farther. This is most definitely not carbon neutral, unless they intend to use Russian nuclear icebreakers for that.

Speaking of Russia, second largest Russian city with population larger than all of Sweden is right next to largest Swedish port, yet somehow that huge, convenient source that would be most carbon neutral of all options (and Russian landfills I'd suspect to be worse for environment than EU ones) isn't even considered. Instead, they go for Romania. Ecology at its finest.

As usual, Irbis does not or cannot read.

I said *better than coal or fuel oil*. Which it is. Even once you account for the use of fuel in shipping, what is being burned is cleaner, because if they were to ship fuel oil from the Med, black sea, or OPEC countries, they would be incurring the same burning of fuel oil, only to burn more fuel oil directly.

Also: there are numerous reasons why Russia might not be a viable option. It is entirely possible an agreement could not be reached due to issues on Russia's end, at whatever area of the org chart is relevant, including pre-existing contracts that cannot be cancelled or that whatever relevant authorities within Russia do not wish to cancel.

[Spoonist]

Couple of short points here.
1. This is a really old method (pre-industrial) and a massive growing industry, not just Sweden or europe but globally. CA is one of the leaders in the US for instance.
http://www.energy.ca.gov/biomass/msw.html
First modern successful WTE plants would be from the 60s and 70s.
2. It is approved, applauded and encouraged by any and all environment agencies, doesn't matter if its public, private or 'charity'(eng?). Its way beyond proven as a method. It passed any such debating point back in the 90s when the new fermenting and chemical processes got incorporated.
3. Q: Is it as "green" as it sounds? A: Yes, and moreso with the new plants. Its benefits are accross the board. So its not just that it is more green than any laymen think, its also a massive profit generator all around. With win-win side-effects to local municipals all the way to global corporations. (Unless the country is in the bad end of the corruption scale).
4. Burning it like this gives less effect on greenhouse gasses than an ordinary landfill by ~30%. So its better to burn than to fill even with 60s technology. This is mostly due to methane. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_gas (See Japan in the 80s for some really bad exampels of other solutions where they due to value of land build residential and commercial areas on top of artificial land made from landfills.)
5. You don't open burn it, that would be stupid. Instead its i multi-process which sort the byproducts, so the real emissions are a fraction of the burn. Depending on country, process and plant design this can be high end sorting or low end sorting. There is proof-of-concept for sorting out all non-solvant metals in processes like these.
6. Q: Why not use russian waste? A: Multiple reasons, main ones being; Russia is not EU, Gazprom is against it for obvious reasons, so Russias leadership doesn't want to, Russian corruption, etc. So even if Eu countries would be interested (which they are no longer) the problems of starting such a venture with Russia is almost impossible just due to internal Russian problems. And yes there have been moot talks and investigations into such ventures with obvious results.
7. Q: If its so good why don't more do it? A: Almost everyone IS doing it to some degree. But due to its nature it almost have to be driven by the state - thus it becomes a political issue, so not all countries can drive such things. For instance in countries where waste disposal is controlled by organized crime/corrupted croonies in one form or another it is a political non-issue. Its very hard to get your cut of the side from something like this since the benefits are spread out, where it is very easy to get a cut from traditional handling of waste.
8. Q: Doesn't shipping eat up any "green" benefits. A: Nope. Shipping is very very very very very cheap from a green and economic perspective. Especially since most of the trials have been through bulk/redundant shipping anyway. (Since its non-perishable etc you can simply wait for non-filled ships and commission containers on those. The ships would make the trip anyway. The added weight is almost negligable in context.)

etc