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- Apr 5, 2009
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At 96 percent, Sweden has one of the highest rates of recycling. So when the country began generating heat and energy from its trash, it should have come as no surprise they would eventually run out of garbage.
We have more capacity than the production of waste in Sweden and that is usable for incineration, Catarina Ostlund, Senior Advisor for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency told Public Radio International.
This situation has caused the Scandinavian country to begin importing 800,000 tons of trash from its neighbors and charging them for it, allowing the Swedes to truly claim that one mans trash is another mans treasure.
In addition to being a revenue stream, Swedens waste-to-energy program generates about 20 percent of the countrys district heating that functions by pumping heated water into pipes that run through residential and commercial buildings. The program also generates electricity for a quarter-million Swedish homes.
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