Sweden begins importing waste to keep recycling plants running

Here in the UK our recycling efforts seem to have gone a long way, putting an end to old practices of simply disposing of waste rather than successfully managing it.

However, currently in the UK we still send as much as 50% of our annual waste to landfills – a figure set to drop to 10% by 2020 but still very high when compared with some high achieving countries like Sweden.

The Scandinavian country of Sweden sources almost 50% of its electricity from renewable energy and has a strong environmental background having begun taxing fossil fuelled based businesses heavily in the early 90’s.

Incredibly Sweden now only sends around 1% of its waste to landfill which means that their recycling plants are in danger of running out of waste to process and therefore could become redundant. To solve this problem Sweden has officially begun accepting waste from other countries in the European Union who are required to reduce their landfill waste. These high-tech recycling plants are particularly important to Sweden as much of the energy created by burning the waste is put back in to Swedish homes to keep them warm during their bitterly cold winters.

We take recycling seriously at LSPS. For more information or to find out how we can help with your waste disposal efforts, please visit our website or call us on freephone 0800 083 7807.