A power plant in Stockholm elected to burn damp and soiled clothing from H&M as fuel last week, according to a new report from Mining.com.
The plant aims to end all fossil fuel use by the year 2020, prompting the facility to use hydrocarbons in recycled wood and trash as a source of energy.
“H&M does not burn any clothes that are safe to use. However it is our legal obligation to make sure that clothes that contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals are destroyed,” a company spokesman from Sweden said.
As of 2013, Sweden was importing rubbish from other countries in order to feed its hungry waste-to-energy incineration power plants. Each year the Scandinavian country imports 80,000 tons of garbage, mostly from Norway, to fuel homes and businesses. Norway pays Sweden to take away its excess refuse. Sweden then burns it to create electricity and heat, and then sends the ashes left behind by the incinerated waste, and which contain many highly polluting toxins, back to Norway for disposal in a land fill. Related: Venezuela Could Lose A Lot More Oil Production
Catarina Ostlund, the senior advisor to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, believes that a new country should be used to provide the extra garbage needed. Norway itself is already very clean, with its own developed recycling sector. She suggests to Public Radio International that “instead we will get the waste from Italy or from Romania or Bulgaria, or the Baltic countries because they landfill a lot in these countries. They don’t have any incineration plants or recycling plants, so they need to find a solution for their waste.”
Sweden is clearly the world leader in terms of recovering energy from waste. Each year its two million tons of rubbish, along with extra imports, are almost completely recycled, with only 4 percent of all waste going into landfill.
By Zainab Calcuttawala for Oilprice.com
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