Sweden has an unusual problem – it lacks garbage, so it has to import it. With a long-standing tradition of recycling and incinerating waste, it now has too many incinerators converting garbage into energy, and too little garbage to fill the capacities, making it the largest importer of garbage from other countries in Europe, currently mostly from Norway.
Since the European Union wants to reduce the amount of 150 million tons of garbage that is disposed of in landfills annually, Sweden sees its opportunity for even greater imports, from which everyone would benefit, including the ‘exporting’ countries, as they would have less garbage and cold Sweden, which largely heats itself with garbage and also receives money for such imports.
– It sounds almost distorted that someone imports garbage, but the problem is not Swedish imports but the huge amounts of waste in landfills in other countries – said Weine Wiqvist, CEO of Swedish Cleanliness. Sweden is not the only country importing garbage – Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands are also doing so among EU countries. Germany individually imports the largest quantities, but Sweden is the first importer by the share of burned garbage.
