Sweden is so good at recycling that, for several years, it has imported rubbish from other countries to keep its recycling plants going. Less than 1 percent of Swedish household waste was sent to landfill last year or any year since 2011. 

 

这些年瑞典的环保工作做得太出色了，如今甚至要从其他国家进口垃圾，才能让本国的回收工厂继续运营下去。去年，瑞典送入垃圾场的生活垃圾不足总量的1%，这种情况一直从2011年持续到现在。
 

 

We can only dream of such an effective system in the UK, which is why we end up paying expensive transport costs to send rubbish to be recycled overseas rather than paying fines to send it to landfill under The Landfill Tax of 1996. 

 

Why are we sending waste to Sweden? Their system is so far ahead because of a culture of looking after the environment. Sweden was one of the first countries to implement¹ a heavy tax on fossil² fuels in 1991 and now sources almost half its electricity from renewables. 

 

"Swedish people are quite keen on being out in nature and they are aware of what we need do on nature and environmental issues. We worked on communications for a long time to make people aware not to throw things outdoors so that we can recycle and reuse," says Anna-Carin Gripwall, director of communications for Avfall Sverige, the Swedish Waste Management's recycling association. 

 

Over time, Sweden has implemented³ a cohesive⁴ national recycling policy so that even though private companies undertake most of the business of importing and burning waste, the energy goes into a national heating network to heat homes through the freezing Swedish winter. 

 

"That's a key reason that we have this district network, so we can make use of the heating from the waste plants. In the southern part of Europe they don't make use of the heating from the waste, it just goes out the chimney. Here we use it as a substitute for fossil fuel," Ms Gripwall says.

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