11 ms·

My 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,

by gvr 13y ago

My 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 ago
It'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.
- philsnow 13y ago
  > It's inefficient to do 10+ cans per person. I think he means that there are 10 cans for the entire condo complex. Also, forcing individual _taxpayers_ to sort trash really keeps environmentalism in the forefront of voters' minds, which I imagine makes it much easier to keep environment-friendly legislation and public works projects going. Consider the opposite extreme, having a single bin that absolutely everything goes in. It would be easy to just completely forget about whatever it is you're throwing away and never think about what ultimate fate each piece is destined for.
  - mhb 13y ago
    It's counterintuive to me that forcing people to sort their trash will lead to a fondness for recycling. Did the draft engender a fondness for the Vietnam war? A different approach would be to charge people for trash pickup. If the cost for sorted trash removal is enough of a savings, then people will do it.
    - gvr 13y ago
      Change leads to awareness. Whether this awareness leads to fondness depends on the context. In the case of the environment, this seems to sometimes be the case. I think young Swedish people have a much greater appreciation of and respect for the environment than our parents. In the case of the Vietnam war, the awareness clearly lead to - how should I put it - an extreme absence of fondness, as it should have.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      Sorting your garbage rarely leads to a sucking chest wound.
    - willvarfar 13y ago
      (Living in Sweden) Actually, the Swedes really do believe in this. Everyone I know conscientiously sorts their trash. A Swede will happy carry their own bags up to their rooms in hotels, too. Most hotels don't have porters. They don't have the whole tipping thing either generally. You go through life doing things for yourself, not paying others to do things for you. Maybe its the US psyche and is some kind of superiority complex? I'm half-serious; why do people on your side of the pond think its a hassle to sort their trash?
effn 13y ago
> 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. Nope, you can burn unsorted garbage. The reason for sorting is so you can recycle materials instead of putting it in a incinerator.
anigbrowl 13y ago
essentially free of homeless I feel it's worth mentioning that other cities and even other states have long had an unofficial policy of sending their homeless/crazy people to places like SF. This has now become the subject of lawsuits - see for example http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/12/first-lawsuit-filed-against-nevada-psychiatric-hosptial-in-alleged-patient/ http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/12/first-lawsuit-fil... As a fellow Euro, I agree with your overall argument, however.
jpadkins 13y ago
so when is sweden going to accept open immigration from all of the poorer neighbors? I'll be impressed if it can keep social cohesion while allowing immigrants to make a better life for themselves. It's easy for an elite society to stay closed and elite. SF is open to some of the poorest people on earth.
- arvinjoar 13y ago
  As a EU member Sweden is open to most of our European neighbors... We also take in way more immigrants than most.
- gaadd33 13y ago
  "SF is open to some of the poorest people on earth." no more so than the rest of the United States is insofar as immigration goes. I don't believe there are many (any?) people living in SF that qualify as the poorest people on earth though.
  - jpadkins 13y ago
    SF is an amnesty city, with a lot of immigrants from central america. Many other US cities have an active deportation policy, SF does not. SF does not push out the homeless either. My point was if Stockholm had the same weather and immigration policies as San Fransisco, it would be facing some of the same challenges with poverty and homelessness.
- purplelobster 13y ago
  Did you just call the American poor "some of the poorest people on earth?" Or were you talking about immigrants? One town in Sweden (Södertälje) has received more Iraqi refugees alone than all of the US has, the country that actually started the war. Sweden's immigrants are actually some of the poorest people on earth, mainly refugees of war and people who would be prosecuted/killed if they returned to their home country. Contrast that with the US that receives heaps of well educated people every year. Today, the ratio of foreign born people in Sweden is roughly equal to that of the US, but again, mainly refugees.
yason 13y ago
In Finland, neighbouring Sweden, we also have more different containers for different trash than you'd care for. It takes time to learn all that and when you've finally sorted out all your trash properly to different bins, you sit on your balcony and look at the garbage truck reversing to the yard. The guy goes inside the garbage shed and brings out one bin of certain color, empties it in the truck, and drives away to the next address only to come back a few days later to do the same. When your mind accidentally multiplies this activity by the number of different colored bins you have there, you begin to imagine the local emissions produced by these different trucks circling around all the time, emptying one type of trash each. There are so many bins that each of them must be rather small, so the buffering capacity of the garbage sheds causes excess traffic and pollution due to regular visits by the garbage trucks. Further, some things are collected in certain recycling points, such as non-returnable glass waste like jars and olive oil bottles, which means people take them there with private cars! For a long time we used to have general waste and compostables. That was quite understandable because you really want the compostables into a separate heap because of...well, composting and you can produce bio gas off composts if the percentage of decomposing waste is high enough. But I'm pretty sure the separation of glass, wood, papers, cardboards etc. could be done in some automated way that reaches a good enough success rate that would make it economically and ecologically viable.
- hvidgaard 13y ago
  It depends on the scale. In Denmark, while we can do it privately by driving to recycle stations - highly inefficient as you mention. The sorting in urban areas however, is mostly glass, paper (and the like), and general waste - it does not matter if a truck picks this up, because he would have to do so as general waste anyway, if it wasn't sorted. Many larger stores also have facilities for batteries, but I'm unsure how many uses them as most people I know toss them in with the general waste. It has also been tried many times to separate organic matter from the rest (different colour of bags), and using automatic systems to sort it. It has been mostly dropped because it's more expensive than just burning everything unfortunately. Which brings me to the main point. We can be very efficient and recycle most of the waste, find a optimum point where we minimize the environmental footprint - it's just expensive, and the first thing to go when the city need to save money. People just don't care about future generations, or don't believe it's a problem, to accept the cost of recycling.

by gvr 13y ago

3pt14159 13y ago

It'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.

philsnow 13y ago
> It's inefficient to do 10+ cans per person. I think he means that there are 10 cans for the entire condo complex. Also, forcing individual _taxpayers_ to sort trash really keeps environmentalism in the forefront of voters' minds, which I imagine makes it much easier to keep environment-friendly legislation and public works projects going. Consider the opposite extreme, having a single bin that absolutely everything goes in. It would be easy to just completely forget about whatever it is you're throwing away and never think about what ultimate fate each piece is destined for.
- mhb 13y ago
  It's counterintuive to me that forcing people to sort their trash will lead to a fondness for recycling. Did the draft engender a fondness for the Vietnam war? A different approach would be to charge people for trash pickup. If the cost for sorted trash removal is enough of a savings, then people will do it.
  - gvr 13y ago
    Change leads to awareness. Whether this awareness leads to fondness depends on the context. In the case of the environment, this seems to sometimes be the case. I think young Swedish people have a much greater appreciation of and respect for the environment than our parents. In the case of the Vietnam war, the awareness clearly lead to - how should I put it - an extreme absence of fondness, as it should have.
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Sorting your garbage rarely leads to a sucking chest wound.
  - willvarfar 13y ago
    (Living in Sweden) Actually, the Swedes really do believe in this. Everyone I know conscientiously sorts their trash. A Swede will happy carry their own bags up to their rooms in hotels, too. Most hotels don't have porters. They don't have the whole tipping thing either generally. You go through life doing things for yourself, not paying others to do things for you. Maybe its the US psyche and is some kind of superiority complex? I'm half-serious; why do people on your side of the pond think its a hassle to sort their trash?

effn 13y ago

> 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. Nope, you can burn unsorted garbage. The reason for sorting is so you can recycle materials instead of putting it in a incinerator.

anigbrowl 13y ago

essentially free of homeless I feel it's worth mentioning that other cities and even other states have long had an unofficial policy of sending their homeless/crazy people to places like SF. This has now become the subject of lawsuits - see for example http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/12/first-lawsuit-filed-against-nevada-psychiatric-hosptial-in-alleged-patient/ http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/12/first-lawsuit-fil... As a fellow Euro, I agree with your overall argument, however.

jpadkins 13y ago

so when is sweden going to accept open immigration from all of the poorer neighbors? I'll be impressed if it can keep social cohesion while allowing immigrants to make a better life for themselves. It's easy for an elite society to stay closed and elite. SF is open to some of the poorest people on earth.

arvinjoar 13y ago
As a EU member Sweden is open to most of our European neighbors... We also take in way more immigrants than most.
gaadd33 13y ago
"SF is open to some of the poorest people on earth." no more so than the rest of the United States is insofar as immigration goes. I don't believe there are many (any?) people living in SF that qualify as the poorest people on earth though.
- jpadkins 13y ago
  SF is an amnesty city, with a lot of immigrants from central america. Many other US cities have an active deportation policy, SF does not. SF does not push out the homeless either. My point was if Stockholm had the same weather and immigration policies as San Fransisco, it would be facing some of the same challenges with poverty and homelessness.
purplelobster 13y ago
Did you just call the American poor "some of the poorest people on earth?" Or were you talking about immigrants? One town in Sweden (Södertälje) has received more Iraqi refugees alone than all of the US has, the country that actually started the war. Sweden's immigrants are actually some of the poorest people on earth, mainly refugees of war and people who would be prosecuted/killed if they returned to their home country. Contrast that with the US that receives heaps of well educated people every year. Today, the ratio of foreign born people in Sweden is roughly equal to that of the US, but again, mainly refugees.

yason 13y ago

In Finland, neighbouring Sweden, we also have more different containers for different trash than you'd care for. It takes time to learn all that and when you've finally sorted out all your trash properly to different bins, you sit on your balcony and look at the garbage truck reversing to the yard. The guy goes inside the garbage shed and brings out one bin of certain color, empties it in the truck, and drives away to the next address only to come back a few days later to do the same. When your mind accidentally multiplies this activity by the number of different colored bins you have there, you begin to imagine the local emissions produced by these different trucks circling around all the time, emptying one type of trash each. There are so many bins that each of them must be rather small, so the buffering capacity of the garbage sheds causes excess traffic and pollution due to regular visits by the garbage trucks. Further, some things are collected in certain recycling points, such as non-returnable glass waste like jars and olive oil bottles, which means people take them there with private cars! For a long time we used to have general waste and compostables. That was quite understandable because you really want the compostables into a separate heap because of...well, composting and you can produce bio gas off composts if the percentage of decomposing waste is high enough. But I'm pretty sure the separation of glass, wood, papers, cardboards etc. could be done in some automated way that reaches a good enough success rate that would make it economically and ecologically viable.

hvidgaard 13y ago
It depends on the scale. In Denmark, while we can do it privately by driving to recycle stations - highly inefficient as you mention. The sorting in urban areas however, is mostly glass, paper (and the like), and general waste - it does not matter if a truck picks this up, because he would have to do so as general waste anyway, if it wasn't sorted. Many larger stores also have facilities for batteries, but I'm unsure how many uses them as most people I know toss them in with the general waste. It has also been tried many times to separate organic matter from the rest (different colour of bags), and using automatic systems to sort it. It has been mostly dropped because it's more expensive than just burning everything unfortunately. Which brings me to the main point. We can be very efficient and recycle most of the waste, find a optimum point where we minimize the environmental footprint - it's just expensive, and the first thing to go when the city need to save money. People just don't care about future generations, or don't believe it's a problem, to accept the cost of recycling.