We Speak For Earth

Sweden Wants Your Trash!

“Only 4 percent of Swedish garbage ends up in a landfill, according to Swedish Waste Management. Due to its efficiency in converting waste to renewable energy, Sweden has recently begun importing around 800,000 tons of trash annually from other countries.

Norway is now paying Sweden to take its garbage. Swedish sights are also set on Bulgaria, Romania and Italy as future trash exporters, as Catarina Ostlund, a senior advisor for the country’s environmental protection agency, told PRI. Those countries rely heavily on landfills – a highly inefficient and environmentally degrading system.”

This could be seriously momentous for developing countries who often receive an enormous amount of waste from developed countries like the US and England.  International efforts to curb waste export have met with very little success.  If developing countries could generate energy from trash they would not only solve the issue of exporting pollution, but would be able to shift away from dirty energy sources like coal.