An important piece of context here is that Sweden basically closed all it’s garbage dumps as they are traditionally known. Anything recyclable is taken to the recycling plant, anything compostable is taken to a compost and the rest is burned as fuel.
The result is that you can’t just drive to the dump with your waste and you have to actually sort and manage your own waste. Or you pay these fucking knuckle draggers to take the garbage and just throw it into the woods. Lots of companies are always on the look out for weird sub contractors to do environmental crime for them and think pink just got a bit too successful.
Why don’t they put all the waste facilities right next to each other instead of making you move just to get rid of your wastes?
Have you heard of the concept of a recycle station? There’s a recepticle for paper, glass, metal, plastic, food waste, electronics and food waste etc next to eachother. You don’t need to drive around.
I have not.
Here they just drive up to our house and take it away.
We essentially have three levels of recycling stations in Sweden.
There is the at home one. Some areas have their “private” trash bins being multicompartment so you can easily divide up glass, metals etc. If you don’t have one of these you just divide it up and take it to your local station. Apartment buildings tend to have a recycling area with various bins.
The local one tend to be able to handle larger items and bigger quantities. Here is often also for textiles. This is the classic recycling station.
And then we have the big ones where you can fill up a vehicle and trailers and get rid of it. It is not a dump as you still have to have things separated. Used furniture, electronics, garden waste etc are taken to these places.
In Sweden theres a central trash collection point for every few dozen homes. For apartments it’s usually in the same building, but for rural homes, it might be at the end of the street or down the road a bit. This way trucks don’t have to drive down every street, residents don’t have to worry about putting their bins out on the right day, and there’s facilities for sorting recycling so that things are recycled properly. Putting everything in the same bin like the US/Canada doesn’t work very well.
Recently, the EU also mandated food waste sorting, so now food waste is also collected and used for biofuel. All of the busses here in Stockholm run on food waste with 0 carbon impact.
In Canada we’re not supposed to put everything in the same bin but some people are shitheads. At least not in Ontario or bc. We got curb side pickup for garbage, paper/metal recycling and compost. Then there’s drop off stations for drink bottles/jugs and glass. Plus the local dump will take e-waste and collect oil, paint, chemicals, etc. They even do a free used goods drop off/pick up spot
Think Pink is accused of carrying out Sweden’s worst environmental crime since the company BT Kemi buried barrels of poison in southern Sweden in the 70s.
That story well known too?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Eleven people have been charged by a Swedish court in what is being billed as potentially the country’s worst environmental crime in half a century.
Harmful levels of arsenic, dioxins, lead, zinc, copper and petroleum products were found during the investigation.
Three years ago, parts of Stockholm were shrouded in smoke caused by a fire in an abandoned rubbish heap run by the company.
They are accused of handling significantly more rubbish than permitted and illegal management, allegedly causing several fires and exposing nearby residents to toxic waste.
Senior prosecutor Anders Gustafsson said the preliminary investigation, which is 45,000 pages long, “is the largest environmental crime in Sweden in terms of scope and organisation”.
According to an estimate by the newspaper Göteborgs-Posten, at least 200,000 tonnes of waste have allegedly been dumped by the company, though the true amount could potentially be much higher.
The original article contains 446 words, the summary contains 144 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Looking forward to the inevitable SVT documentary/-ies on this.
I’m looking forward to it being adopted into a gritty BBC crime drama.
Where does Sweden actually do the recycling? Like do they have their own recycling facilities, or do they ship it to China or somewhere like most countries?
Recently, for instance, at Site Zero, the world’s largest recycling center for plastics. Obviously, it depends on the material being recycled.
That’s awesome. As long as they are the ones doing the recycling I have faith it’s being done. Shipping it to China (although I think they stopped taking trash) or India or wherever. I don’t trust that. But in house in Sweden, good on them.
