Sweden’s eco-cycle model
As Anna-Carin Gripwall, communications manager at Avfall Sverige, the waste management agency, summarized, the Swedish cold has been key to this evolution: “In southern Europe, they don’t get heat from waste, it goes down the chimney whereas here we use it to replace fossil fuels”.
This is just one of Sweden’s spearheads to reach the Zero Waste objective, zero waste, which includes the recycling of medicines (43% of citizens return unused drugs to the pharmacy) or the involvement of foreign multinationals such as McDonald’s, which has even exchanged hamburgers in exchange for used cans.
“Recycling is an exaggeration,” says TreeHugger. “In fact, they incinerate about 50% of their waste for heat and electricity, and even on their own website they admit that it is not the best strategy, that it is not really recycling and that it takes less energy to recycle and reuse than to burn and manufacture a replacement from scratch.”
Sweden treats waste from
Deposit the container in the machines, pick up the gift voucher and start your shopping: it is that simple and beneficial to recycle through automatic compactors; a new era marked by technology and unattended and automated solutions that make possible the consolidation of real Smart cities.
In this context, precisely Smart vending has had a lot to do; deploying its possibilities in different areas and being a reference once again; in this case, as far as circular economy is concerned.
If we take a look at the containers, the reverse vending model comes to mind: compacting machines installed next to the vending machines to contribute to sustainability. Because of its potential, reverse vending has broken down barriers and is now a solution for many business models, which are increasingly opting for automatic distribution as a complement to service or, in other cases, as the main service.
Once again, and in the purest reverse vending style, the company that has carried out the initiative has opted for the Return and Reward System (RRS), thanks to which users can obtain rewards in exchange for recycling containers.
Recycling in Sweden pdf
On May 17, recycling day was commemorated internationally, a date that invites us to reflect on the importance of this practice for our future. The waste we generate in our daily lives is becoming a matter of concern for the entire international community because of the problems caused by its mismanagement, so several countries have sought ways to solve the increase in the accumulation of garbage in landfills. Sweden has become a global example in terms of waste management to the point that it has been called the “recycling revolution” to its system whose objective is to completely reduce the generation of garbage.
Waste has become a major environmental problem and waste management is no simple matter. The accumulation of waste in landfills generates greenhouse gases, such as methane, which contribute to atmospheric pollution and thus to the increase in global temperature. At the same time, landfills diminish the quality of life of the communities living in their vicinity, which are usually poor because of the spread of diseases and pests. Other major problems are the arrival of waste into the sea and with it the contamination of the oceans or landslides where landfills are located that have covered streets and houses with waste. In other words, it is urgent that countries take action to reduce the amount of garbage that reaches landfills and, if possible, to put an end to landfills.
Recycling companies in Sweden
If you thought recycling was not as important as it seems, you are wrong, there is already a country that lives off the waste it produces. Sweden currently recycles or reuses 99 percent of its garbage, a figure that improves on its own record from 2012, when they reached a staggering 96 percent.
But they are so efficient that almost 800,000 tons of garbage is imported from the UK, Italy, Norway and Ireland. For the Swedes, three tons of burned garbage contain as much energy as one ton of fuel oil. Thanks to this, 950,000 Swedish homes are heated with the energy produced by this system, and 260,000 more are supplied entirely by it.
To better understand the importance of this topic, we will learn about the people in Sweden, how they live, their language, currency, government, population and economy. Sweden is a Nordic country located in the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Stockholm has been its permanent capital since 1523. Sweden, along with Norway, occupies most of the peninsula and is the fifth largest country on the continent.