Sweden sends just 1% of its trash to landfills
"Sweden burns nearly all its trash, much of it in lieu of recycling" is an equally true but very different sounding headline.<p>Halfway down, some controversy is mentioned:<p>> “Waste-to-energy prevents proper recycling and makes climate change worse.” Vahk is also skeptical about the plants’ safety. “Our recent report found high levels of persistent organic pollutants like dioxins or furans around waste incinerators in three countries.”<p>And Sweden imports trash to burn, raking in $100m/year in doing so.<p>I'm not at all against trash incineration, especially if they are capturing the energy, but there a many incentives (financial and feel-good) to paint it one way or another. It's simply a series of tradeoffs that we should be cognizant of.<p>I'm also not particularly against landfills, which are in a sense merely a form of carbon <i>and pollutant</i> sequestration. Not mentioned in the article is that many landfills <i>also</i> trap that methane gas and then burn it to do more or less the same energy reclamation process, and that this is potentially less energy intensive and less pollutant intensive, since they are not burning plastics etc. It would be nice if they had a comparison.<p>Tradeoffs everywhere.