courtesy www.sweden.se

When I learnt that Sweden imports waste, I scratched my head for a long time. Here we have the waste all around us, and a country needs to import it? Why?

It turns out Swedish are too good at recycling waste. The report says, only about 4% of the waste there goes in landfills. Rest of it all is burned as fuel or recycled into new products, raw materials, and gasses.

The municipal bodies and the citizens work together to sort out food, paper, and other kinds of waste materials separately to get the best results.

That's all well and good, but why to ask for other people's waste?

It turns out, in Sweden, they use the energy generated by garbage-burning for heating and supplying water throughout their towns. Residential buildings. Commercial facilities. About 1/5th of such energy demand is supplied by the garbage sources.

But because of great recycling habits and waste management systems they are not left with enough garbage to burn. So, they import it from neighboring countries. Especially Norway. The figure is 8 Lac tons of waste material per year.

Now interesting thing is, Norway pays them for taking away the garbage! It's burned in Swedish incinerators, gives them heat and energy as well as revenue.

Isn't that smart!

Innovation isn't just about technology, it also needs a new mindset. A new approach to life. And collective efforts.