Sweden recycles 99% of the waste collected in the country
Swedes know: small steps lead to big changes if taken together. As the portal Sweden.se notes, the list of eco-friendly deeds is constantly growing. Scandinavianist Maria Kryuchek talks about ten of the most obvious eco-habits of Swedes.
1. They sort waste into 15 categories
Swedes send less than 1% of all household waste to landfill. The remaining 99% is recycled in one way or another, turning into useful things – electricity, heat, biogas, or new newspapers and bottles.
One feature of the Swedish system is thorough primary sorting, which takes place right in homes. Everyone is responsible for sorting their waste into different containers, which are then taken to the appropriate plant. This is cheaper and easier than transporting mixed waste to a sorting facility first, but it places responsibility on each citizen.
To make sorting convenient and pleasant, a clear system has been developed. It starts with different containers in kitchens, often color-coded. For larger waste, there are special sorting stations. Unwanted items in good condition can be donated to charity second-hand shops.
Now sorting has become a habit – few people would dare throw a glass bottle into a plastic container or put a battery in mixed waste. A trip to the sorting station is a sacred part of a regular weekend. Responsibility is shared. Someone threw away a household appliance or glass container in the common chute? In some Swedish municipalities, the entire housing cooperative risks a fine.
In 2018, 93% of glass bottles sold were returned for recycling. With plastic, things are a bit worse – just under half are returned. To motivate Swedes to return more bottles, there is a deposit system: when buying a drink in a plastic or glass bottle or aluminum can, you pay separately for the drink and separately for the packaging. If the packaging is later returned to special receptacles installed in almost every supermarket, the deposit can be refunded – spent in the same store or donated to charity.
Incidentally, responsibility for recycling packaging and some other categories lies with their producers – you cannot simply produce a drink without thinking about what to do with the bottle or can later.
2. They start eco-education in kindergarten
Swedes seriously tackled the waste recycling problem in the 1990s, although convincing people to sort waste was initially difficult. But what happened a few years later?
“Dad, you’re throwing away trash wrong and harming the planet I still have to live on!” – it turned out that this works much more effectively than any advertising campaign. Sweden has raised the first generation that has never seen a single trash bin in the kitchen and cannot imagine themselves outside the environmental agenda.
In kindergarten and school, children sort their waste, learn to make compost, go on excursions to sorting stations; several lessons a week are devoted to the science of recycling and energy efficiency.
Even serious adult organizations like the Packaging and Newspaper Collection Association do not forget the importance of involving the country’s young residents in the common cause. For example, a special website tells children about 6 heroes with different food preferences – one likes to have old newspapers for breakfast, another likes clear glass, and his brother likes colored glass: it is important to follow each one’s diet.
3. They offset carbon emissions from air travel
One in four Swedes admits that the debate around climate change has influenced their habits, including their choice of transport for vacations and business trips. Topping the blacklist of non-eco-friendly transport are, of course, airplanes, but giving them up is not always possible.
The idea of “climate compensation” is simple: your plane produces a certain amount of harmful substances, but somewhere else emissions are reduced by the same amount. You can offset a flight, for example, by investing in the construction of a solar or wind power plant.
The amount depends on the project. For instance, the website klimatkompensera.se offers to offset a trip from Stockholm to London for about 10 euros, Moscow for 9 euros, Bangkok for 66 euros. This money goes to build a solar power plant in India.
The Scandinavian airline SAS automatically offsets emissions for children’s tickets and tickets of bonus program members, and offers other passengers to pay for compensation as a voluntary additional option when purchasing tickets. Many employers, including SAS itself, cover the compensation for their employees’ business flights.
4. Taxes on non-eco-friendly items and bonuses for eco-friendly ones
Taxes on non-eco-friendly cars and bonuses for eco-friendly ones are a relatively new innovation; the law came into effect in 2018. Car owners pay higher taxes for three years after purchasing a new car, minibus, or truck that does not meet CO2 emission standards. The goal is to motivate citizens to buy more eco-friendly cars or not buy at all.
Those who purchase new electric cars or cars with low emissions can expect a government subsidy of up to 6,000 euros. Incidentally, a subsidy is also available for those who buy electric bicycles, which are intended to partially replace cars.
5. Switch to public transport and bicycles
Cars produce 67% of all harmful emissions in Sweden's transport sector, while buses account for about 1%. The government and the public are united: to improve the environment, everything should be done to make it more convenient to use public transport, and even better, bicycles.
Employers often support their employees' desire to cycle to work. In practice, this can mean a convenient shower and changing room in the office, or company bicycles that can be rented for business meetings. Bicycles have traditionally been used by postal workers, and recently private bike services for delivering small goods have appeared in big cities.
6. Repair and rent instead of buying new
Buying clothes and interior items at second-hand stores (not to mention bringing your own bag to the store and using a reusable water bottle) has long become a standard of good manners for Swedes.
The next step in the fight against consumerism is a general reduction in the consumption of new things and the development of the sharing economy. For example, Hygglo is the largest service in Northern Europe where anyone can rent out or borrow all kinds of construction tools and other items that you don't want to buy for one-time use. All items are insured, participants are verified, and 80% of the rental cost goes to the owner.
The government supports those who do not buy new. Since 2017, a special tax deduction has been introduced for those who, instead of going to the store, decide to take an old refrigerator or TV for repair – they can get back half of the repair bill. Services for repairing clothes, shoes, home textiles, and bicycles have also become cheaper – VAT on these services was halved.
7. Give up meat
Meat production accounts for 15% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the world. Beef is the most harmful to the environment – producing 1 kg of this meat releases up to 39 kg of greenhouse gases. Add to that the emissions from transporting the finished product to stores, which are often in another country, and you get the most environmentally unfriendly product imaginable.
Many Swedes start small and eat vegetarian meals several times a week. According to the latest Vegobarometern study, conducted annually by the Institute of Public Health, 52% of Swedes quite often eat meat-free meals, and 5% of them are vegans or vegetarians. The study data show that every third Swede has started eating less meat – precisely out of concern for the environment.
8. Don't throw away food
Throwing away food is not just wasteful. It is also very unecological – because all the resources spent on its production end up in the trash. Swedes, as usual, start with themselves: they plan menus in advance, buy less, and try to adhere to the zero food waste concept. And the waste, peelings, and food that still has to be thrown away are collected separately and used to produce biogas for public transport.
Then creative businesses step in. For example, in 2016, Sweden came up with the Karma app – a marketplace for restaurants and shops that can sell unsold sandwiches and salads at a 50% discount. Today, the project unites almost 1.5 million users and over 9,000 cafes, restaurants, and producers. Together, they have saved more than 3 million portions of food that would otherwise have been thrown away.
In Stockholm, there is a restaurant called K-märkt, which cooks from unsold premium products. When the restaurant first opened, the owners personally called suppliers and convinced them to sell at half price products that would otherwise have to be thrown away. Now the K-märkt chain consists of 7 restaurants, and suppliers call themselves. The restaurant has no menu, and chefs daily find boxes of "saved" surprises in their kitchen, from which they have to come up with new dishes each time.
9. Eat what is grown nearby
With the emergence of the New Nordic Cuisine concept in the mid-2000s (tasty, simple, seasonal, local), Swedes began to look at products produced as close as possible to where they are to be eaten. Some restaurants even indicate how many kilometers from there to the farm where the carrot grew or where the steak on your plate comes from. The shorter the distance, the less transport pollution caused. The circle closed when Sweden even started producing wine – a traditionally imported product.
The boom around locally sourced products has captured the minds of Swedish foodies and supermarket shelves. This has led to a new rise in urban farming. Enthusiasts rent all sorts of unused horizontal surfaces (be it an abandoned pier or an undeveloped field) and set up gardens, supplying homes and restaurants with those very local products, especially since the environmental situation allows it.
The country's main department store, NK in Stockholm, has also set up a mini-farm on its roof with edible herbs and a space pleasant for people, bees, and birds. Farms are equally important for maintaining urban ecosystems.
10. Don't fish or hunt just for fun
Sweden has legally enshrined the right of public access to nature (allemansrätten). It means that anyone can hike, pitch a tent, swim, pick berries and mushrooms anywhere, provided they treat nature with care and respect private property.
Hunting and fishing are not included in this right, but it is still important in this aspect – for example, one can reasonably use a private pier to fish. About a million Swedes call fishing their hobby, and 320,000 hunt.
Hunting and fishing are strictly regulated – this is done to preserve biological diversity. Fishing without a special permit is allowed along the entire coastline and on the 5 largest lakes, but in other cases you need to obtain or purchase a license from the owner of the water body. However, there are restrictions everywhere on the fishing season, species, quantity, and size of caught fish – too small or too large fish must be released back.
But hunters must have a national license, the so-called "hunter's card," to obtain which you need to pass an exam and get a permit for hunting weapons. Hunters are also required to pay a special fee to the Wildlife Conservation Fund.