Posts tagged with "recycling"

Producer responsibility = Producentansvar

Posted by Katja 3 Comments
Oct 17 2011

Many countries all over the world have recently banned free plastic bags (plastpåse) in grocery stores, including in Australia, Great Britain, Ireland, France and many more. Kenya, certain parts of India, Bangladesh and Taiwan have even banned plastic cutlery in some cases. Sweden has not. According to Hannes Borg, employee at the Ministry of Environment, Sweden has no reason to.

The reasoning being one that, Sweden has a law saying that all producers have the responsibility to take care of the waste of their product. They have to by law, offer their customers some sort of possibility to recycle the containers of the bought product. The producer responsibility (producentansvar) has been applied to 6 different areas; packaging, waste paper, batteries, electric and electronic devices, cars and tires. The customer also has an obvious responsibility to sort and return the remnants of the packaging.

Consequently, there are no rules for a product like a dish-brush, since nobody has payed for the dish-brush to be specially “taken care of”. That is also one of the reasons why only packaging is recycled in Sweden. Other plastic materials, for example, are usually incinerated with the rest of the garbage.

When one of Sweden’s most established newspapers SvD (Svenska Dagbladet) interviewed Svante Axelsson, secretary general for the environmental organization “The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation” (SSNC) (Svenska Naturskyddsföreningen) even he said that a ban on plastic bags would be more of a symbolic action. He however pointed out, that it is not good to consume plastic, and any unnecessary consumption of plastic bags should be avoided. SSNC hope consumers will bring their own cloth bags with them when they do their shopping instead.

After learning that “environmentally friendly” Sweden, in faith that their producer responsibility law will be enough to stop mass pollution, has not banned plastic bags, do you think the right decision has been made? Which would in your opinion be the more efficient way to prevent environmental damage?

If you are interested in reading an article on the subject (although it is in Swedish) this is the link to SvD’s (Svenska Daglbladet’s) homepage:

http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/plastpasen-forbjuds-men-inte-i-sverige_759345.svd

Sweden prioritizes recycling

Posted by Katja 1 Comment
Aug 25 2011

It’s funny the things which you notice sometimes. Just the other day I moved into an apartment, one that was built quite a few years back. The linoleum floors, the big windows and the kitchen were the things I noticed, but what I noticed most of all was that under the kitchen sink there was no recycling storage. Noticing that, I thought “wow this apartment is old”. Nowadays all the apartments that are built are influenced by what this age’s Sweden stands for. We have agreed that recycling is something good, and so decisions have gradually been made to make it easier for people who rent housing to be able to recycle in the garbage room, as well as leave compost bags. The paper bags are left in huge piles in the common garbage room for people to take when they need them. Though it is still the private individual’s responsibility to make sure that dangerous waste gets left at a special recycling station.

Sweden is good about reusing and recycling in a lot of ways I think. The special recycling stations are in Swedish called “Återvinningscentral”. Usually people load big trailers filled with junk and they drive up to the containers to sort the stuff into the right containers. Different categories are burnable, cardboard, electronics, styrofoam and wood amongst other things. There are special spots for paint, light bulbs and other dangerous or poisonous matter, as well as garden waste like cut grass and branches.

 Not so long ago recycling wasn’t anything people were so interested in, and not at all something natural like nowadays.

Plastproblemet är löst

Posted by Transparent Language 2 Comments
Nov 20 2008

As I’m sure you know, Sweden is big on recycling and being environmentally friendly. And I happen to like that. We recycle our plastic bottles and aluminum cans and get money back (pant) at the store. Those plastic bottles and cans that can’t be returned for pant go into normal recycling bins.

And we have recycling bins for nearly everything. There’s a bin for newspapers, advertisements and that kind of “soft” paper, there’s a bin for cardboard and paper packaging. There’s a bin for metal containers. There’s a bin for “white” glass, and there’s another for color glass. And there are also special bins for stuff like batteries and light bulbs. And then, there’s a bin for plastics.

Sorting your trash before taking it out is fun. Instead of one basket in the kitchen, we have six, plus a special bag for pant-able bottles and drink cans. It’s a lot of work sometimes, but you get used to it pretty quickly. The whole system seems to work, and I feel better knowing that I am doing my part to help the environment. And I’m glad to live in a country that takes the environment so seriously.

So, I was very please to see that now we can also recycle plastic foil, bags, and other “soft” plastic products. We even got an official newsletter from our housing company telling us the good news.

I read the announcement very carefully and shook my head. Am I the only one that has a problem with this particular sentence:

En plastfolie/film rengör du enklast genom att torka av den med hushållspapper. (Plastic foil/film is easiest cleaned by wiping it off with a paper towel.)

I’m sorry, but isn’t it a bit odd to tell people to wipe off plastic foil (so it can be recycled) with a PAPER towel? Hmmmm…

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