

Sweden imports waste from European neighbors to fuel waste-to-energy program - awlo
http://www.pri.org/stories/science/environment/swedes-import-trash-to-power-the-nation-10428.html

======
thomaspaine
Is incineration really the more environmentally friendly way to go? How does
this compare to something like coal in terms of environmental impact? I'm
imagining giant trash furnaces spewing ash and smoke into the sky but I'm
guessing that they're using something more sophisticated.

~~~
mercuryrising
The idea behind incineration is that you have a piece of something that is
capable of burning and burning it at a high enough temperature breaks all the
molecules inside down into smaller pieces. Or, to put it slightly differently,
if you have ever smelled burnt plastic, it smells really bad. If you burn
plastic at a high enough temperature, it no longer smells bad. High
temperature makes molecules break apart into smaller pieces, smaller pieces
are generally better for the environment, and they usually don't smell as bad.

This sounds good, but you need a really high temperature. >1500F should do it.
In my city, we incinerate some trash. People are too good at separating the
trash though, so most of the stuff doesn't really burn. They need to use paper
from the recycling to make sure the temperature is hot enough to actually
incinerate the trash.

Now, we could let all the trash just sit there. Would this be better?

Trash that just sits there a) takes up space b) doesn't smell good and c)
doesn't do anything for us.

a) is a big problem in some places in the world, but not so much in America.
We're fine letting big piles of garbage sit there. Not our biggest concern.

b) is a more interesting one, garbage does not smell good. Why? It's
decomposing. Decomposition puts off a lot of methane, bacteria come in and
break the trash down into methane and a bunch of other molecules. Methane
holds a lot more heat than Carbon Dioxide (in terms of the 'global warming
potential' [1]). For every 25 tons of CO2 emitted, that is equivalent to 1 ton
of methane over 100 years. Takeaway: methane is bad, CO2 is better than CH4.
Also, because trash doesn't smell good you get the 'NIMBY' effect, so instead
of placing the final destination of trash close to the producers, we now need
to transport garbage far away so we don't see or smell it. This is bad, magic
in society is almost always bad because you lose perspective on how [insert
adjective] something is. I never realized how dirty the water was until I saw
it, or how smelly the garbage was until I went to the dump. My garbage doesn't
smell that bad, but everyone's garbage and months of decomposition will make
it smell. If trash is far away, it's out of sight and out of mind, you don't
realize how much of an impact people have with trash.

c) Garbage doesn't do anything for us, it's merely that - garbage. It's served
it's life, it's over, it just sits now. Why not try to get something out of
it? Why not kill two birds with one stone? We always need heat for something,
and if we can burn trash and get heat, that would be better than burning
natural gas and letting garbage rot. This idea has been applied in a number of
places around the world, it's called District Heating. Hot water is routed
into your house, rather than having a separate water heater (homes may still
have one to heat the water up more) [2] And this also has a hidden advantage -
people always make garbage, and people always need heat. The waste stream can
now be a useful product in the society, and a 'closed loop' society is a
little bit closer.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global-warming_potential>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating>

~~~
foofoo55
Another view of incineration:

\- it's environmentally open-loop. Life on earth is fundamentally closed-loop.
Energy extraction is a one-way street. (I find entropy depressing.)

\- it discourages the 3 waste r's (reduction, re-use, and recycling).

\- the net energy recovery is always a small fraction of the energy that went
into making the stuff, and less than the savings of the alternate 3-r's.

\- organic materials should be aerobically composted, which prevents methane
generation and truly closes the biological loop, or at the very least put
through anaerobic digestion to recover some hydrocarbon fuel prior to
composting whatever remains.

------
troymc
In Burnaby, British Columbia (where I live), there's a waste-to-energy
facility (WTEF) that has been operating since 1988. From their fact sheet [1]:

"Each year the WTEF turns 285,000 tonnes of garbage into steam and
electricity. The steam is sold to a paper recycling facility, while the
electricity sold to BC Hydro is enough to power 15,000 homes."

"Metals are magnetically removed from the bottom ash and sold to a recycling
company to produce reinforcing steel."

More details are in the fact sheet:

[1]
[http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/publications/Publication...](http://www.metrovancouver.org/about/publications/Publications/WasteEnergyFactsheet.pdf)

------
gbaygon
Does anyone is familiar with the process they are using? The article says that
it involve incinerators and it doesn't sound healthy to me.

~~~
Gravityloss
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasification#Waste_disposal>

The most modern technique is to gasify the waste before burning. That way it
can even be used in a gas turbine for electricity, if desired.

------
halvsjur
And Oslo (Norwegian capital) is importing garbage from the UK this winter.

~~~
lutze
One Direction's Christmas single?

Sorry, couldn't resist...

------
sek
Not unusual at all, Belgium imported 770.000 tons and exported 100.000 in
2010.

Here a list of european countries:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.focus.de%2Ffinanzen%2Fnews%2Fnachschub-
fuer-muelloefen-deutschland-importiert-eine-million-tonnen-
muell_aid_728930.html&act=url)

------
lifeformed
I wonder if Sweden has to buy the waste, or if instead they charge for the
service.

~~~
Gojja
Charge ofc. .:) Waste management as its best

------
kghose
It's an interesting positive spin, but the other way to look at this is that
they mis-judged capacity and built too much.

~~~
protomyth
Or they needed a certain amount of capacity to make it profitable. A lot of
infrastructure projects have minimum inputs to be useful.

------
tomwalker
What a fantastic problem to have!

------
zerostar07
They just need to consume more, problem solved.

