Landfills are growing at an unsustainable rate in many countries, and they are a danger to the health of people and the planet. The European Union has set a target to reduce the rates of landfill by 2035, and most of the Nordic countries are already well ahead of that pace. Much of Sweden’s success in that regard can be credited to recycling - nearly half of what it throws away is recycled. But what it does with the other half of its waste is what sets Sweden apart from much of the world. Nearly all of their non-recycled waste is burned to generate electricity and heat. It’s a method that is far better for the environment than sending garbage to landfills.

 

Sweden was an early adopter of waste-to-energy. As far back as the 1940s, houses were connected to district heating networks that generated heat for individual homes. Over the years, more of the energy that powered these district heating networks was supplied by waste-to-energy power plants. Today Sweden has 34 of these plants supplying 1,500,000 households with heat and 800,000 with electricity - impressive figures for a country with a population of only 10 million. Sweden does not make enough trash to fully supply these plants, so other European countries pay them about €100 million a year to burn two million tons of their garbage.

 

Incinerating garbage for heat and electricity is an idea that has spread from the Nordic countries to the rest of Europe. There are now 492 waste-to-energy power plants across the continent, burning 96 million tons of waste annually to supply almost 20 million people with electricity. In addition, about 10% of the energy provided to district heating networks comes from these plants. This trend continues to grow as Ireland, Lithuania, Poland, Spain, the UK and Denmark have all recently opened new waste-to-energy plants - including a small one here on Ibiza.