Models of Sustainability: Sweden Runs Out of Garbage

[Cigar]

http://www.pachamama.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/recycle.jpg

Due to Sweden’s innovative waste-to-energy program and highly efficient recycling habits, the Scandinavian nation faces an interesting dilemma. They have run out of trash.

Sweden’s waste management and recycling programs are second to none as only four percent of the nation’s waste ends up in landfills. By contrast, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, over half of the waste produced by U.S. households ends up in landfills.

Because the Swedish manage waste so effectively and then use what remains to partly power their country, they are now living an environmentalist’s dream; a shortage of garbage.


- See more at: http://www.pachamama.org/blog/models-of-sustainability-sweden-runs-out-of-garbage#sthash.R8DJfcqL.dpuf



It's amazing what you can do if you just say, "Yes we can" over "NO"

[Chris]

Sweden has been improving ever since...

Booming Sweden’s Free-Market Solution (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-06/booming-sweden-s-free-market-solution.html)


Not so long ago, Sweden could claim world leadership in unmitigated Keynesian economics, with a 90 percent marginal tax rate and a welfare state second to none.

Now Swedes look at the conflict between the U.S. and German examples over whether more spending or more austerity is the key to financial salvation, and for them the choice is easy: Germany was right. Northern Europe harbors no sympathy for the spendthrifts of Southern Europe.

Americans still think of Sweden as a tightly regulated social-welfare state, but in the last two decades the country has been reformed. Public spending has fallen by no less than one-fifth of gross domestic product, taxes have dropped and markets have opened up.

The situation is similar in the other Scandinavian countries, the Baltic nations and Poland. But no turnabout has been as dramatic as Sweden’s....