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Sweden Imports European Garbage To Power the Nation
Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that Sweden's program of generating energy from garbage is wildly successful, but recently its success has also generated a surprising issue: There is simply not enough trash. Sweden has recently begun to import about eight hundred thousand tons of trash from the rest of Europe per year to use in its power plants. Sweden already brings trash from Norway and hopes to get garbage from Italy, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic countries. Sweden creates energy for around 250,000 homes and powers one-fifth of the district heating system. Its incineration plants offer a look into the future where countries could potentially make money off of their trash instead of dumping. Landfilling of organic materials – a highly inefficient and environmentally degrading system (PDF) — has been forbidden in Sweden since 2005 and emissions of the greenhouse gas methane from landfills has fallen dramatically (PDF). 'I hope that we instead will get the waste from Italy or from Romania or Bulgaria or the Baltic countries because they landfill a lot in these countries,' says Catarina Ostlund, a senior advisor for the country's environmental protection agency. 'They don't have any incineration plants or recycling plants, so they need to find a solution for their waste.'"
If only forum spam could be processed into electricity.
Bloody socialists. My garbage is mine to dispose of as I see fit -- after, all I created it through my own private endeavour! To see it wrested from my hands is frankly an assault on my liberty and a chilling curb on garbage creators like me everywhere. By golly, if they take too much of my garbage, I'll be forced to move overseas.
But, how much energy does it take to move that amount of waste, from those countries, to Sweden, sort, process, and extract energy from them compared to, say, the useful energy out from the process that's heating those 250,000 homes (which doesn't seem an awful lot, and I live in the UK which is smaller but has more people in it)?
Surely the transport costs alone would mean it would be better to buy the diesel used to transport that amount of material, then burn that directly?
How is this "green"?
Because, of course, it contributes NO greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
When are we going to get serious about NOT actively promoting global warming with every 'solution' we come up with? Sure, incineration reduces methane emissions, but couldn't we either recycle more, (and more efficiently), and/or just consume less?
Our pursuit of 'shiny' is killing us.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
One man's trash is another man's electricity.
Ingenious play on Sweden's part. What happened when every country adopts these policies - encouragement to throw more stuff away?
Swedes are very good at recycling and waste separation. Even McDonald et al. have different trash bins for everything.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Meanwhile, in the United States of America, the discussion is Oil Drilling. Not trying to troll, but you guys need to get your priorities straight. It was not long ago you guys were pointing out the way forward and the world needs you to do so again.
A renewable resource of almost unlimited potential! We can just consume more and throw it all in the garbage when we run low!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Swedes, in general, shun new and shiny ... they like minimalistic (even in Stockholm ... well, maybe not Östermalm). Also, you try to get your head around the concept of "lagom."
The fact that they dump it in the sea, volcano, ... is none of your business.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
What's the calorific value of an iPad?
Generating electricity from trash is pretty inefficient, the US had almost 200 incinerators in 1990 but roughly half of them have been shut down due to economics. The real money for Sweden is the fee for taking trash from European countries that don't have (or won't build) landfills. Still, in the long run it seems make more sense to burn it rather than just bury it even if burning is more expensive in the short term..
Italy does have incineration plants and recycling facilities. Although it's true that there is still way too much reliance on landfills.
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
minirals inside the trash that was left behind. closer to home then going to antartica or africa.
Damn Swedes buying up all the trash. I just need phase three to drop so the market can support another nuke plant.
Because, of course, it contributes NO greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
We're some way off global, carbon-free energy production, as you point out. But that's not the problem this is solving.
Of course energy from garbage contributes greenhouse gases. But this is not displacing greenhouse-gas-free nuclear or wave power generation - it is reducing the dependency on high-running-cost, greenhouse-gas-producing oil / gas / coal power. So it increases sustainability to that extent. That is a good thing. And less landfill is also a good thing.
It's not about "shiny", so much as improving things where and when we can. But we need to increase reuse and recycling (in that order), and reduce waste caused by built-in obsolescence, excess packaging, and excessive consumption too.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
We have a thing in the E.U. called a landfill tax. It's purpose was to encourage recycling. It has encouraged sending all the waste to mass burn instead because it makes landfill more expensive, and is cheaper than recycling.
We used to do that in the US.
Columbus Ohio had a trash burning power plant but it got shut down in the mid 1980's because of the costs of environmental regulations. I wonder if anything like this could be possible in the US nowadays with the improved emissions processes?
In Central CT, we stopped putting anything but ash into our landfills and have a trash to energy plant. It teeters on the edge of viability, the outfit that runs it is a bit sketchy, but there is no doubt that it is helping to dispose of waste AND generating energy. We recycle all kinds of stuff before it hits the plant... and I've often wondered if we really should recycle the paper and cardboard rather than have it go to the generating plant... I don't know which is better. Is there anyone here who does?
don't click; some kind of fascist propaganda game
FT PDF: "The sludge from the water purification process is dealt
with and finally stored in a safe way."
Further down in PDF: "Residues from flue gas
cleaning consist of ash, which is separated by a filter,
or sludge, which is separated in the wet cleaning
stages. These residues often have a higher content of
heavy metals than slag, but they are hard bound and
therefore must normally be dealt with by landfilling."
So almost perfect, but still much better than most nations.
Clearly if they had played Sim City 4 they would realize this is a very bad idea in the long term (even though the 5k simoleons might be worth it at first)
The organic matter they burn was produced by farming, therefore the full cycle did not produce COâ. Unlinke burning oil, which releases all COâ fixed in ancient ancient forests during the last 500 million years.
... to take care of all the trash that doesn't want to go to Sweden.
Surely the transport costs alone....
People will usually pay you to take their trash :)
No municipality wants a landfill in the neighbourhood, transport by sea is usually cheap.
How is this "green"?
Compared to dumping stuff on landfills this is very much green. Bad stuff doesn't leak into the ground water, and the emissions are filtered pretty good.
I trust the Swedes to do a good job at filtering the emissions.
Some Swedes do not know, that other Swedes are about to start burning garbage in Lithuania (one of the Baltic countries): http://www.fortum.lt/chp-plant .
Is it just me or is this nothing new? As least my dutch garbage has been used to generate electricity for ages, often using the waste heat from that process for heating. And since garbage processing is a commercial business, obviously they're going to want to use their capacity to the maximum. Since laws in Europe require proper garbage disposal, this is has been booming business in many European countries for quite a while and plants in the Netherlands have been processing garbage from several other European countries since national laws were changed to allow for this back in 2009.
Note that the obvious overcapacity in many countries is the result of way too enthusiastic responses to increased garbage dumping taxes in several countries. For example, the overcapacity in the Netherlands appears to have been created in response to the Germans finally prohibiting garbage dumping. Since Germany has overcapacity itself (and is for example importing garbage from Italy) this overcapacity in the Netherlands and apparently now in Sweden as well results in a lot of attention for importing garbage.
Note that this overcapacity - unfortunately - has another effect, and that's diminished commercial interest in recycling. As long as the furnace is not doing anything, money is lost. Therefore, potentially recyclable material is probably often burned nowadays...
0x or or snor perron?!
This isn't new. The music industry in the US has been doing this for decades.
read up on the nuclear waste disposal handled by mafia. the ship conveniently sunk off the coast of somalia.
granted they also dump stuff off the coast of italy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxic_waste_dumping_by_the_'Ndrangheta
Most Eastern European countries have infrastructures that date back to the communist bloc days. Will they produce gabarge that will run Western European nations?
You must be from New Orleans.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
There are mountains of ash being piled up around Marion County's incinerator in Oregon, near Salem.
AFAIK it gives of no methane so is worthless and highly contaminated with dioxins etc.
Then there is the problems with soot needing to be cleaned periodically.
What a foul job that was...been there, done that.
Just to mention a few minor problems.
But it's a good idea (I thought.)
This is news? I've been powering my DeLorean with trash for years!
take your goddamn hands off my bitcoins!
http://www.sustainablecitiesinstitute.org/view/page.basic/class/feature.class/Lesson_Trash_Incineration
Southern Italy: where toxic waste is reclassified and dispersed in random places in the countryside.
Hah! I was a yankee visiting NO for Mardi Gras this year and most locals I ran into thought it was weird when I would do things like crush my cig and look for a trashcan to throw it in. Same with carrying an empty beer glass.
I am a conditioned animal, throwing it on the ground just feels wrong.
There's some white trash that lives not far from here they can use too.
I used to have a good sig...
Germany is importing trash for over a century now. Especially hazardous waste is a welcome guest to local garbage-to-energy plants. BTW: Obeying all EU emission standards.
Integrated heating system. Better than everyone with their own heating. Doing things in bulk means no middleman, and no premiums for 'do it in a hurry'.
Sweden is thinking big. Singapore also now leading on food waste. While Nuclear is so un-trendy they can pocket the difference for landfill taxes. The biggest preventer of re-cycling was selling all in-city land, so separation cannot be done at the source.
Unstated is what to do with the flock (burnt remains). Tip is good, but some old flame retardant plastics are very bad news.
don't click; some kind of fascist propaganda game
Yes, I imagine it would have been enjoyed by the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik. There are a worrying number of whacko Scandinavian white supremacists out there. Why don't groups like Anonymous concentrate on fucking them up for a change?