How Sweden Plans To Turn The World's Trash Into Cash!
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At a time when most countries are struggling to figure out where to dump all the trash that is generated on a daily basis, Sweden is turning the other cheek - They want more trash. In fact so badly that they plan to import 800,000 tons of it from other countries. Intrigued? Read on . . .
In the 1940's, when most of the world had never even considered building a recycling plant, this progressive country began a program to incinerate their garbage and turn it into energy. While this initially released harmful toxins into the atmosphere, over the years, the country has perfected the technique so much that these have now been reduced to minuscule levels!
Meanwhile, the energy produced by these plants has steadily increased so that today, it generates enough energy to provide heat to about 20% or 810,000 Swedish households and electricity to 250,000. And, it gets better.
Thanks to intense public awareness messages, strict laws and an amazingly conscientious population, only 4% of all Swedish trash ends up in a landfill. In contrast 63% of the trash generated in the USA ends up in landfills!
However all this 'greenness' has resulted in a rather unique problem. While its incinerator plants have the capacity to process up to 2 million tons of household trash each year, it doesn't not enough raw material! Hence, the decision to import other people's trash - Something that is definitely not in short supply anywhere else in the world.
Neighboring Norway has already begun sending their garbage, while Bulgaria, Romania and Italy are seriously considering the proposition too. All in all, Sweden expects to import 800,000 tons each year. They are of course charging heftily for this 'import' - But we somehow think there will not be much haggling over the cost!
Now, if only all the countries could line up to learn how the Swedes were able to do what none of us can or really want to do, innocent marine animals would not have to deal with our plastic bags, bottles and everything else we dump in the oceans.
Resources: wired.co.uk, inhabitat.com, npr.org.
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418 Comments
- Nomoalmost 12 yearsThats awesome!
- sweetalmost 12 yearsWay to go Sweden!
- Handeralmost 12 yearsi want money
- neeneealmost 12 yearscool
- Sophia Woz.almost 12 yearsI learned in this article that in Sweden only 4% of the people's trash ends up in landfills, versus the 63% of the people in the US's trash that ends up in landfills. Sweden is also running out of trash and is importing trash from other countries! I think this is wonderful and that the US and other countries should either send trash over to Sweden or do this process ourselves because if all the countries do this, then the world will be a MUCH cleaner and enviorment-friendly place for everyone.
- Richard Aalmost 12 yearsI learned that sweden is coming up with a way to import trash and not harm animals. I think it is nasty but a good idea because they are saving animals.
- Eddie Aalmost 12 yearsI learned that 4% of trash in Sweden end up in landfills. Garbage can be made into energy that powers 20% of Swedish homes. This makes me wonder why other countries dont do this
- ryan z.almost 12 yearsi learned that Sweden plans to import 800,000 tons of trash from other countries and that only 4% of swedish trash ends up in landfills
- J@HN Dalmost 12 yearsI learned that when trash is incinerated it can be used to create energy and that Sweden is planning to make a lot of energy from 800,000 tons of trash. i think that this is great since we have so much garbage in the world now we can put somewhere!:) phillip duca helped wit this because of the technical difficulties
- juan gonzalez almost 12 yearsthere going to help out the environment a lot importing import 800,000 tons of trash