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Sweden Runs Out of Garbage With Waste-to-Energy
- tlongren 13y agoAmes, Iowa, home of Iowa State University, does something similar. All of their trash gets burned to generate electricity for the city. Seems to work quite well for them, been doing it for probably 30 or 40 years, now.
- rquantz 13y agoHow do they produce safe emissions from trash? They have a hard enough time when burning something where they control the input.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- tlongren 13y agoI have no idea. Here's a page about the Resource Recovery System: http://www.cityofames.org/index.aspx?page=168 http://www.cityofames.org/index.aspx?page=168
- wf 13y agoI don't think they do; however, it seems to be possible.[1] Googling "batch oxidation" gives back this PDF[2] describing it. Answering your question again: "Unlike incinerators and other thermal processes, the BOS™ does not use a high temperature, turbulent processes to reduce the waste. The “quiet”, non‐turbulent smouldering of waste during the gasification phase means that the production of fly‐ash is almost eliminated, and the process does not suffer from temperature peaks and troughs, thus reducing problems with the formation of NOx and dioxins. However, many waste materials contain chemical components which can cause problems in any thermal process. Acid gases and metals must be neutralised and or / removed, and dioxins, furans, and particulates must all be reduced to minute amounts in order to meet the stringent EU legislation and compliance requirements. BOS™ achieves this by the use of a comprehensive Flue Gas Treatment (FGT) system through a dedicated Best Available Technology (BAT) program. The injection of sodium bicarbonate and activated carbon in a powdered form neutralises the acid gases and absorbs heavy metals and dioxins. Urea, injected into the Secondary Combustion Chamber, reduces NOx levels dramatically, and a bag-house filter system removes any last traces of particulate before the exhaust goes to atmosphere." [1]http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/business/energy-environment/trash-burning-with-a-clean-energy-twist.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/business/energy-environmen... [2]http://wtecanada.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/WtEC-BOS-Web-brochure-1.pdf http://wtecanada.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/WtEC-BOS-Web...
- Swannie 13y agoPhrases like "... a dedicated Best Available Technology (BAT) program." give me cause for concern. It amounts to "we're not provably worse than any of the other technologies that have been adopted"... aka it's far from the best available, which I'm sure is cost prohibitive. That aside, I do have a lot of respect for the work that goes into this sort of chemical engineering - absolutely fascinating stuff.
- yxhuvud 13y agoBurn it hot enough and emissions turn out mostly ok.
- total__C 13y agoHere's a presentation regarding the 'SYSAV' waste-to-energy facility in Malmö, Sweden: http://www.sysav.se/upload/flash/sysav.swf http://www.sysav.se/upload/flash/sysav.swf There's an extensive pollution collection/scrubbing system that captures the pollutants as solids and liquids.
- alipang 13y agoBetter article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/world/europe/oslo-copes-with-shortage-of-garbage-it-turns-into-energy.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/world/europe/oslo-copes-wi...
- petercooper 13y agoThis is a naïve but genuine question.. is shipping trash from the UK to Norway and then setting it on fire better for the environment than burying it? (Or, at the very least, is it better to burn trash than to extract and burn something else?)
- alex_doom 13y agoOh they burn it? I though they were doing that bacteria to methane idea?
- petercooper 13y agoI don't know about the Swedish one but the Norwegian one in the other linked article says: Oslo, a recycling-friendly place where roughly half the city and most of its schools are heated by burning garbage — household trash, industrial waste, even toxic and dangerous waste from hospitals and drug arrests — has a problem: it has literally run out of garbage to burn. So it seems so, yeah :-(
- dmentat 13y agoI live in a Swedish city, and I recently visited the local "garbage burning" power plant. It's not like the trash is just burned and the fumes released into the atmosphere, they pass through like 10-15 different types of filters removing and recycling different particles. The fumes that finally are released supposedly have a very negligible environmental impact. I'd link you some sources, but I got this information first-hand from the plant engineers, not sure where to look.
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- phy07 13y agoThe article mentions incinerators; I wonder how it is impacting air quality, specifically dioxin levels. I recently saw this documentary which discusses various approaches to managing trash: http://www.trashedfilm.com/references.php#tabair http://www.trashedfilm.com/references.php#tabair
- EGreg 13y agoAre there any negative externalities turning garbage into energy? What are the byproducts? Pollution released into the air? Spread to everyone else? Because this is wonderful!
- pyoung 13y agoSounds like they do a pretty good job of controlling the emissions. My primary concern, and this is a fairly uneducated concern, but I always envisioned a (bleak) future where we had already mined all the precious and rare-earth metals and minerals and were forced to use our garbage dumps to re-claim those materials. Of course a good recycling program, would in theory, prevent this from ever being necessary, but in general, burning stuff to create energy feels sooo 20th century, we should really be using renewables and nuclear.
- EGreg 13y agoWell my primary concern was the garbage and pollution, such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. If we really found a way to cut our garbage down to 4%, that's pretty incredible ... of course if we start generating 25x more garbage to begin with then it will negate that.
- marvin 13y agoIt's certainly a better option than putting it into a landfill, where the organic portion will turn into energy anyway, and the non-organic portion will do nothing but potentially pollute the groundwater.
- anateus 13y agoMassive amounts of CO2 primarily. Also dioxins, but there are ways to combat that they may be be employed.
- EGreg 13y agoSo where does this CO2 go? Do we need more trees to offset it, or what
- memnips 13y agoFor a different perspective I found this older article which ponders the economic impact of forcing 9 million people to spend time and energy sorting their trash: http://mises.org/daily/2855 http://mises.org/daily/2855
- lutorm 13y ago... an article which of course assumes that the costs of the (not spelled out) alternatives are zero... My parents do this and it's not like it's very onerous.
- alipang 13y agoWell, the point he makes is that the same is true for the other statistics. It'd probably be cheaper environmentally for a garbage truck to pick up all your garbage for instance, rather than each person traveling to the recycling center themselves.
- sebcat 13y agoI've lived in a couple of villages/towns/cities in Sweden, and the garbage trucks do pick up the sorted household garbage. Recycling centers are for stuff like old furniture, used engine oil, etc. I guess you could implement a system for that too. Inform the city when you have less common items to throw away and when the quota for your neighborhood is full, a truck gets dispatched to pick it up. Would require some extra infrastructure I guess, but it might be worth it.
- icebraining 13y agoHere in Portugal - or at least, in many municipalities - you can call up the city and arrange for them to pick it up at a certain day, for free (yes, it's paid by taxes, yada yada). They take furniture, appliances and green waste (from gardens and such).
- malyk 13y agoIn Oakland you get one free "bulk load" trash pickup a year kindly provided by Waste Management.
- msvan 13y agoReminds me of the Daily Show's incisive documentary about Sweden. http://www.videogum.com/65751/the_daily_show_visits_robyns_b/tv/late-night/ http://www.videogum.com/65751/the_daily_show_visits_robyns_b...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- saltvedt 13y agoMy home municipality on the west coast of Norway sends their waste to Sweden to be burned. Before we did that, all households had to sort the waste into separate bins for plastic and organic waste. The organic waste were turned into compost locally. It changed because Miljøverndepartementet (Ministry of Environmental Protection) changed the regulations for depositing plastic waste. So many municipalities have trucks going "over the mountain" with waste to Sweden to be burned. And we actually have the ability to burn waste for energy here on the west coast of Norway, but I guess simply sending it to Sweden is cheaper. And it actually isn't quite as bad as it sounds like because many trucks also deliver manufactured goods from Sweden and would have return empty. I have no idea what the net environmental benefit is (or if it even is positive (or if anyone really knows)).
- jchrisa 13y agothey have a big PDF that shows they've been able to cut emissions of almost all the bad stuff except NOx, a precursor to acid rain: http://www.avfallsverige.se/fileadmin/uploads/forbranning_eng.pdf http://www.avfallsverige.se/fileadmin/uploads/forbranning_en...
- batiste 13y agoHow is that economically/environmentally sound to import garbage? Garbage should be burned locally to avoid extra pollution.
- freehunter 13y agoNot in my backyard! Seriously, that's why it's shipped rather than burned locally. Some people don't want these plants around them no matter what the benefit.
- altcognito 13y agoFor example: Detroit http://www.epa.gov/region07/air/title5/petitiondb/petitions/detroit_renewable_petition2011.pdf http://www.epa.gov/region07/air/title5/petitiondb/petitions/...
- jernfrost 13y agoProbably better to ship it to a high quality incinerator than to burn it in a primitive one emitting lots of pollution. Transport by sea requires negligible amount of energy. Local transport will likely waste more energy than the transport between two countries.
- Dewie 13y agoSweden is pretty spacious anyway. I could imagine that tightly packed countries in Western Europe could want to alleviate some of that garbage by sending it to be burned in some remote place in Northern Sweden, for example.
- INTPenis 13y agoAll our green buses here in the south of Sweden (Scania/Skåne) run on biological waste. There are big campaigns for getting more food and having people separate food and biological waste in their trash.
- austinrory 13y agoThat's certainly better than setting it all out to float in the ocean as new garbage islands.
- stretchwithme 13y agoIn the third world, the poor comb through garbage dumps seeking anything that might have value. Obviously, I'd like to see that end. There are many more productive things humans can do that are far less of a risk to their health. But imagine robots that are able to do it, either at the source or before the garbage is burned or buried or shipped off elsewhere. A lot of work still remains before that happens, but one day robots will be carefully examining each item discarded and sending it to the most appropriate place.
- nawitus 13y ago'Robots' do sort garbage, but it doesn't work as well as humans, and it's probably suited only to certain types of garbage.
- briandear 13y agoOf course, when those poor people can afford robots to scavenge in the trash, they won't need to scavenge in the trash. As far as more productive things, when you don't have anything to eat and nothing of value, there's nothing more productive than trying to find something of value. Also, scavenging trash dumps is probably the least of their health concerns. Let's solve clean water before we start worrying about trash sorting in Somalia.
- ballard 13y agoNYC. Problem solved. 0. NYC, like many big cities, creates a ton of trash (excluding writers and actors). 1. I didn't see anything about CO2/CO/COx emissions. Landfills are semi-sequestration. Burning is definitely not sequestration. It doesn't seem scalable. See also: http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_green_why_we_should_build_wooden_skyscrapers.html
- aetherson 13y agoThese articles about "running out of garbage" make it sound like a great thing, but it seems to me that it's a big disadvantage of any kind of waste-to-energy scheme. I mean, the concept is that you spend a ton of money making these power generation facilities that do waste-to-energy, and then that cost is partially defrayed by selling the energy. But if you don't actually have enough garbage to run the facility, then it is that much less cost-efficient. It implies that something has gone badly wrong. Why did you build so many facilities?
- return0 13y agoI wonder if they even cost much, after all a furnace is not some terribly new technology. In Copenhagen they seem to have excess money to turn it into a giant smoking ski slope: http://www.archdaily.com/339893/bigs-waste-to-energy-plant-breaks-ground-breaks-schemas/ http://www.archdaily.com/339893/bigs-waste-to-energy-plant-b...
- aetherson 13y agoA brief web search didn't come up with any cost estimates of the Swedish facilities, but this page lists the cost of a singaporean one at about $500 million. http://www.keppelseghers.com/en/content.aspx?sid=3028 http://www.keppelseghers.com/en/content.aspx?sid=3028 It's possible that that's drastically different than the Swedish ones, but I fundamentally do not believe that any power generation facility is a terribly cheap facility to build or maintain. If you do, I suggest that that is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.
- nixy 13y agoOne of the newest waste burning plants in Sweden, Block 5[1], cost $150mm (SEK 1bn) to construct in 2005-2006. [1] http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uppsala_Block_5 http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uppsala_Block_5
- bjornsing 13y agoNo worries, we have money to burn.
- return0 13y agoHaha look at those socialists, they ran out of energy.
- return0 13y agoI thought i didn't have to hold my sarcasm card here.
- gvr 13y agoMy dad's condo [edit: condo complex] in Sweden has 10+ different trash cans. You divide your trash into individuals cans for batteries, bulbs, cardboard, paper, compostables, and so forth. I don't know but I assume that part of the reason that Swedes are able to deal effectively with the trash is that they sort it properly at the source, so that they more easily can process it. When I read stuff like this it honestly makes me homesick. I've lived half my life on the left side of the political spectrum (Sweden/France) and the other half on the right side here in the US. I love it in SF, but this supposedly "progressive" city has - especially considering how many smart people that live here - an appallingly poor understanding of how to architect a civilized society. There is no reason this city shouldn't be clean, essentially free of homeless (and sometimes insane) people, have great public roads, excellent public transportation, low crime, worry about more interesting things than what size diamond ring Kanye bought for his lady, and so forth. There is a good data driven TED talk on how points like the above correlate with wealth and equality: http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html
- 3pt14159 13y agoIt's inefficient to do 10+ cans per person. It is more efficient to sort it at the garbage transfer station the way Canadians do. Most places have 3 cans. General, glass/plastic/cardboard, and biodegradable. Also, SF is considered "progressive" for many of its completely unsustainable policies, like housing controls, which ultimately lead to further economic inefficiency. A truly progressive society is more like Toronto where the poor can generally get help, but we don't mind putting up condos or new office space. Also the Swedes do some things that are much more right wing than America, like Free Schools (essentially private schools operating with a government payment, similar to the coupon model). It isn't a left-right difference. Furthermore, Sweden has cut services and taxes more than any other western country in the past decade. Also you can't really compare it anyway. There is a far higher amount of cultural homogeneity in Sweden than the US, even in the white portion of the US, and the average IQ is 3 or 4 points higher. As for homelessness, you are living in SF. This is what you get. The US has a much higher veteran rate than Sweden which highly correlates to homelessness (usually due to PTSD and associated drug abuse) and the capital of homelessness in North America is SF.
- codex 13y agoDo they sequester the massive amounts of CO2 that trash burning generates? If not, sinking that carbon into the ground may be a better idea. Or not: landfills produce methane and other natural gases which are more potent than carbon dioxide if they're not captured and reused. Has anyone done the math?
- dredmorbius 13y agoMost of a typical waste stream consists of current/recent biomass -- a surprising amount by both volume and weight is paper and paper products. Plastics and such do represent fossilized carbon (usually) but are a smaller percentage overall. So the net carbon impact is much lower than burning fossil fuels. And yes, the methane reduction helps, though methane does have a pretty short (about a decade) residency in the atmosphere as I understand.
- perssontm 13y agoInteresting the me as a Swede, I read about this "problem" at HN first. Never read/heard anything about this in mainstream swedish media. I might if course have missed it, but if its such a big problem as the article like to state, I like to think I should have heard of it, otherwise it would be fair to question the sources of this.
- dredmorbius 13y agoThis story illustrates both the upsides and limitations of trash-to-energy programs. On the positive side: many sources will pay you to take their trash from them. There's nothing like free energy. On the negative side: - Sweden's exhaustion of its own sources of trash show that the concept is inherently limited, even in an abundant consumption economy. That is, one which is producing ample waste streams. As the article notes: "the fastidious population of Northern Europe produces only about 150 million tons of waste a year, he said, far too little to supply incinerating plants that can handle more than 700 million tons." That's a kind way of saying that Sweden's overbuilt its trash-to-electric capacity by 467%. - Some trash is more equal than others. Countries such as Switzerland and Germany which offer highly segregated waste streams find themselves with many takers. Italy, who is stereotypically ... less organized, not so much. Again, noted in the article. - There are issues with contaminants, which require monitoring of the input waste stream, the combustion process, and emissions controls. - Ultimately there's the question of how much trash will exist in a world with a leaner energy profile. In which case it's likely we'll find that there's a very high excess of trash-to-energy infrastructure, though much of it might be applied to other feedstocks, including biomass. Though this also has its limits: http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange... Putting this in an American context (likely familiar to most readers): Americans produce 230 million tons of waste stream, about 4.3 - 4.6 pounds per person per day. http://www.learner.org/interactives/garbage/solidwaste.html http://www.learner.org/interactives/garbage/solidwaste.html http://www.epa.gov/osw/basic-solid.htm http://www.epa.gov/osw/basic-solid.htm In a best-case scenario, this would be pure biomass. I'll assume the same energy potential as carbohydrate (oil-based products will have roughly double this, glass, metal, and inorganic solids less), at 4 calories/gram, or roughly 971 GWh of electrical energy. That's an appreciable amount of energy, but given that annual electrical production is 4.1 tera watt-hours, my hypothetical puts waste-stream energy production at less than 1/4 of electrical energy usage, or roughly 6% of total energy usage. And that's before considering the energy requirements of collecting and processing the wastestream itself, or the effects on waste production in a reduced-energy environment.
- gaadd33 13y agoIn your best case scenario, what about the reduced expenditure on shipping trash to places where landfills are open? E.g. I believe NYC ships a good bit of trash down to the Carolinas. Also only 54% is currently sent to a landfill, so that would reduce your energy return to 524 GWh. That's about 20 years worth of new power plants coming online. (It appears most years the US adds about 20-25 GWh in power generation capacity a year)
- dfrey 13y agoCan't they just go to Ikea to get more?
- gboone42 13y agoThere's a reason the waste-to-energy plant was always my favorite in Sim City. I too ran out of trash a few times.
- rkrkrk21 13y agoDear India - Are you listening ?
- 31reasons 13y agoNope. India is practicing Gandhi's 3 monkey principle when it comes to garbage.
- throwaway1947 13y agoNo. They're busy worshiping 5th generation Gandy monkey.
- dschiptsov 13y agoThere is Finland with millions Russian tourists - endless source.))
- qwertzlcoatl 13y agoI am so overflowing and stuffed from all these NSA revelations, that I read "Snowden Runs Out Of Garbage" two times in a row.
- abalone 13y agoThe dirty secret here is CO2 emissions. Everything Sweden does to cut down waste to begin with is awesome. But of course you're going to run out of trash if you BURN EVERYTHING LEFT. What marks this as a puff piece is the lack of honesty around CO2. The only place they mention it is in comparing it to.. generating the same amount of power from burning oil. It is spun as a way to reduce CO2, because look at all the oil we aren't burning. But this is a disingenuous comparison. A proper comparison would pit burning trash against renewable energy sources that don't produce greenhouse gases. Nowhere do they even let on that incinerating trash is anything but a total positive for the environment. There are other signals that this is a PR piece. They note that they've reduced "emissions" by 90-99 percent. Sounds like a miracle. But if you look closely and read all the details.. they don't count CO2 as an "emission". Source (that the article is based on): http://www.avfallsverige.se/fileadmin/uploads/forbranning_eng.pdf http://www.avfallsverige.se/fileadmin/uploads/forbranning_en...
- batiste 13y ago"A proper comparison would pit burning trash against renewable energy sources that don't produce greenhouse gases" Not really, because carbon neutral renewable energy usable for heating are not plentiful. AFAIK there is only: Sustainable wood pelet burning with particles filters, Heat pumps. And there is contestations about heat pumps being a green energy source http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/sep/08/heat-pumps-green-heating http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/sep/08/heat-pump...
- abalone 13y agoNot plentiful? Iceland does most of their district heating with geothermal. Their total energy production is over 80% renewables. Of course it's a proper comparison. Even if heat pumps have drawbacks, so does burning trash. You compare the two.
- bonchibuji 13y agoA few months back, I wrote a newspaper article about this as well as Mexico City's waste management schemes. http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/ikea-burritos-and-some-trash/article4130794.ece http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/ikea-burritos-and-...
- polskibus 13y agoburning trash for energy is not really efficient. It's better than leaving it on a landfill but it is not the same as recycling. A one-off reuse is still far from perfect situation where most material can be reused (with let's say 10% loss of material in each cycle). Congratulations to Sweden for being better than everyone else but there's still room for improvement!