Sweden is already the environmental leader and has taken aggressive initiatives to counter Global Warming and to hold the monster of Climate Change at bay. The Scandinavian nation plans to go Fossil Fuel-free by 2050.
The fact remains that the landfills are being filled up at an alarming rate. More than 59 percent of the world’s waste ends up in the landfills. The map below shows the number of landfills in the US, and the alarming rate at which they are growing.
The trash being thrown into the landfills ultimately releases toxins into the groundwater and contaminates the soil as well. Sweden is the only country on the globe that only disposes merely one percent of its trash into the landfills, which implies that more than 99 percent of the garbage gets recycled.
The waste is used to generate electricity for the country using a process called ‘Waste-to-Energy’ (WTE). Households in Sweden annually produce 4.4 million tonnes of trash, of which 2.2 million tonnes are used to generate power via the WTE program.
Sorted garbage for WTE is burned up to produce steam, used to spin turbines for electricity generation. In fact, the system is so successful that Sweden imports nearly 800.000 tonnes of waste from the neighbouring countries to power its 32 WTE plants.
Citizens play a huge role in the success of the WTE program, sorting out their garbage for the recycling and WTE plants. Sweden can effectively be labelled zero-waste country by 2020 if the nation keeps up its efforts.
Time to take action America!