At a time when most countries are struggling to find where to dump all the trash that is generated on a daily basis, in Sweden they want more trash. They even plant to import 800,000 tons of it every year from other countries. Intrigued? Read on ...
In the 1940's most of the world didn't think about building recycling plants. At that time this progressive country bagan a programme to recycle their trash and turn it into energy. At the beginning such plants released harmful toxins into the atmosphere. But over the years, the country has developed the technique and now this industry is practically harmless.
Since the beginning these plants have been producing more and more energy. Today the industry generates enough energy to provide heat to about 20% or 810,000 Swedish households and electricity to 250,000. And it gets better.
The Swedish government organizes special educating programmes for people. There are strict laws in the country on the subject. The population is amazingly conscientious ( ). Thanks to all these factors, 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 Swedish incineration plants ( ) cfn process up to 2 million tons of household trash each year, they don't have enough raw material! So the country came to the decision to import other people's trash.