A look inside Sweden’s recycling-obsessed, garbage-powered cities (video)

Screen capture Vimeo Last year, I wrote about how Sweden has a garbage problem . But rather than too much, as in most of the rest of the world, there’s a shortage and they have to import it from other countries like Norway, the UK, Italy, etc. This might seem strange – who would want more garbage? – until you realize how Sweden does things. They have a very sophisticated recycling system that allows them to capture materials that can be used again (metals, glass, paper, plastics, etc) and send less than 1% of waste to landfills, and they have many cogeneration plants that incinerate the rest to generate heat and electricity to help run their cities. Right now, Sweden has to import about 800,000 tons of garbage from other countries each year to keep its cogen plants operating at capacity, something that other countries are only to glad to help them with since restrictions on landfills are growing. Vimeo/Screen capture Is this a good thing? A bad thing? First, let’s look at how they actually do it: There are of course pros and cons to this. The best solution, as mentioned at the end of the video, is […]

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