Why Sweden Buys Europe's Trash

Sweden gets paid around a hundred million dollars a year to take other countries' garbage. Britain, Norway, Ireland, and Italy ship roughly two million tonnes of trash across the sea to Swedish incinerators, and the countries sending it write the checks. Meanwhile New York pays over three hundred million dollars a year to haul its own trash into other states. This is the story of how the 1973 oil embargo turned Swedish garbage into fuel, how a dioxin scare almost killed the whole system, and why the real secret was never recycling. It is a heat grid buried under every Swedish city, and America, the country that invented district heating in 1877, never built one. What's in this video: Why burying a ton of trash outside Atlanta costs about forty five dollars The 1973 oil embargo that forced Sweden off imported heating oil Hogdalen, the Stockholm furnace that started eating the city's garbage The dioxin crisis of 1984 and the world's first incinerator limits The 99 percent recycling myth and what the numbers actually say Chester, Detroit, and why America votes its incinerators down Chapters: 0:00 The Trash Paradox 1:56 The 1973 Oil Crisis 4:07 The Import Machine 6:34 The 99% Myth 8:44 Could America Copy It? Sources include the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Avfall Sverige, the US EPA, the EIA, Eurostat, and reporting from the BBC, Grist, PRI, WHYY, and Zero Waste Europe. #Sweden #WasteToEnergy #Recycling #DistrictHeating #Infrastructure #Economics