Swedes are the highest recyclers in the world. To talk about recycling we also have to mention all streams of waste. This includes food waste, trash, and products that are eligible to be recycled. Only 1% of Sweden’s waste is sent to landfills. Just to reiterate 99% of Sweden’s waste is recycled! There is 52% that is burned and converted into energy. The remaining 47% is recycled and given another life. As an environmental science nerd, this is astonishing. Read further as I break down how Sweden has figured recycling out.
Recycling is simply a way of life in Sweden. It is ingrained in the culture by being taught to kids at a very young age. Literature says that culture is a huge factor that drives sustainable development—it starts with the mindset of the people. Sweden has been a progressive leader in sustainability and knows that this kind of change starts with youth.
Sweden has strict laws and regulations that not only aid in recycling and recyclability of products. They make it so that certain products aren’t manufactured, packaged, or imported in the first place to end up in the waste stream. They also highly encourage citizens to first reduce and reuse before recycling.
Recycling is just an initial step in working towards climate goals and sustainability. It’s not the end all be all for the climate, but such a foundational place to start. Changing our everyday habits and behavior is where this change will happen and I believe Sweden is leading the way.
4 Main Ways Sweden Accomplishes 99% of Waste Recycled:
- Education to Citizens
- Social Systems in Place
- Extended Producer Responsibility Law
- Waste-To-Energy Model
1. Education to Citizens
Environmental education in school systems is something that is heavily taught to children. From as early as preschool, kids are taught how to recycle by their teachers and in their households. Swedish teachers have a special curriculum to educate and engage children in environmental conservation. They engage kids in activities such as making their own paper or implementing waste policies in schools. This kind of education continues throughout Swedish schooling.
On September 21st, Sweden celebrates what they call World Clean Up Day. Kids and adults alike pick up litter and clean their surroundings. This kind of upbringing impacts the culture profoundly and the act of recycling has become second nature to Swedes.
I’m going to talk more about environmental education in Sweden in another article – it is fascinating.
2. Social Systems in Place
Swedish society is set up so citizens can easily and conveniently do their part. I was very pleased when I moved into my apartment to find that I was supplied with 3 separate bins for: trash, food waste, and recycling. My apartment complex then has a shared recycling station to sort all your recycling and of course, separate bins to dispose of the food waste and trash. I found this to be normal at every complex I passed. Upon further research, recycling stations are required to be at least 300 meters from every residential area.
This is night and day from when I lived in the US. For households you had to PAY for an additional recycling service to come and in apartments you needed to go to recycling centers yourself. When I lived in my US apartment I bought all my own bins, sorted everything myself, packed it in my car, drove 20 minutes to a recycling center (that had limited hours), and then again sorted it all out there to dispose of. I did this about once a week. I know it’s not that big of a deal, yet I was one of the only people I knew who did this because of the additional effort required. There is almost zero effort here in Sweden.
There are new urban developments in Stockholm that have trash chutes that directly funnel trash straight into waste-to-energy incinerators. This means they are directly contributing to the energy that heats their homes. HOW COOL IS THAT?! (more on this later)
There are also incentives like bottle deposit stations at grocery stores to bring aluminum cans and plastic bottles and you will get some vouchers or change back. I see them used regularly.
3. Extended Producer Responsibility Law
I found it fascinating when I moved here that ~90% of the products I bought had recyclable symbols on them. This is due to a law Sweden implemented called the Extended Producer Responsibility Law. This law means that the very companies that manufacture products (especially plastic products and packaging) must be responsible for the entire life cycle of that product. There were over 10,000 companies that were affected by this law. Similar legislation has been implemented throughout the EU. This is a fantastic solution for single-use plastic.
The post-consumer stage is the key phase where this matters. Usually, the consumer is responsible for what happens with that product after they use it. Let’s face it – it takes too much time and energy for consumers to properly research or know what to do with it. More times than not, it’s simply thrown in the trash and never thought about again to eventually end up in landfills or the ocean.
Extended Producer Responsibility Law takes this burden off the consumer. Another goal of the law is plastic neutrality, meaning “for every amount of plastic product footprint created, an equivalent amount thereof is recovered or removed from the environment by the product producers through an efficient waste management system.”
Sweden also has adequate processes and infrastructure for sorting plastics and recyclables out. The items can either be cleaned and recycled into new products or be extracted into energy.
4. Waste-To-Energy Model
The food waste and waste that cannot be recycled are sorted and extracted into energy with the waste-to-energy model. This means the waste that would usually end up in landfills is now heating our homes, powering our lights, and running our water. This is amazing and what a circular economy should look like!
As I mentioned before, only 1% of Sweden’s trash goes into a landfill. Sweden was an early adopter of the waste-to-energy model in the 1940’s. Which incentivized citizens more and recycling rates skyrocketed – which landed them as the global leaders in recycling. See any correlations?
Sweden now has 34 waste-to-energy power plants. These plants supply over 1.4 million households with heat and over 780,000 households with electricity.
Soooo…doesn’t burning trash contribute to CO2 emissions? You’d be right, they still produce emissions. However, trash sitting in landfills is one of the leading methane producers. Methane is 84x more potent than CO2 emissions over 20 years. Therefore, comparing the numbers of CO2 emissions from waste-to-energy plants to methane-producing landfills, it’s still less harmful. These plants also reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. However, Sweden is still working on CO2 capture for these plants to lessen their emissions.
In 2016, Sweden was running out of waste (what a unique problem). They were considering importing other countries’ waste to continue this successful model. However, they don’t fully rely on this method for energy. Waster-to-energy’s main goal is to keep waste out of landfills.
Sweden still encourages waste prevention, they have a tax on single-use products, and they reformed the tax system so citizens can get cheaper repairs on existing items.
Sweden kinda seems like a utopia for environmentalism, right? The more I research and live here – I think it’s the closest we have to one.
Loved reading this… Every time I put stuff in my building’s recycling bins, I tend to sigh, because: A) many of my neighbors are oblivious to what can/can’t be recycled, and B) I know much of of the material we put in those bins will NOT be recycled. Cuz the U.S. is nowhere near Sweden, as this spells out… 😒
I totally agree, people in the US aren’t educated on how to recycle properly.Then a majority of what we think we’re recycling just ends up in landfills anyway. It’s all very disheartening, hopefully we can get better systems in place. Thanks for your comment 🙂