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Sweden Runs Out of Garbage With Waste-to-Energy

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Re: Sweden Runs Out of Garbage With Waste-to-Energy

#51

Post by edmccard »

xxpor wrote: post #33
read_again wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! I really think the fact that Sweden is 30 time smaller than the US is a significant aspect of the problem, which ought to be highlighted a bit more when doing a comparison between these two countries on their energy models. How hard would it be for the US to implement such solution (assuming the cost would not be as prohibitive as it is compared with nuclear energy), first in a large city like NY (or LA) a…

Go look up Harrisburg and how their trash->energy plant as worked out.

>Go look up Harrisburg and how their trash->energy plant as worked out.

Or look up Lancaster, PA (one county over from Harrisburg) and how their trash->energy plant "is considered a national model for waste disposal, featured in industry trade publications."[1], and how they (Lancaster county) are in the process of buying the Harrisburg facility.[2]

[1] http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/08/tale_of_t... [2] http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/856655_County-waste...

Re: Sweden Runs Out of Garbage With Waste-to-Energy

#52

Post by bjornsing »

aetherson wrote: post #41

These 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, the…

No worries, we have money to burn.

Re: Sweden Runs Out of Garbage With Waste-to-Energy

#53

Post by 3pt14159 »

gvr wrote: post #46

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…

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.

Re: Sweden Runs Out of Garbage With Waste-to-Energy

#54

Post by tsotha »

aetherson wrote: post #41

These 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, the…

Yes, this is the problem with cellulosic ethanol as well. Right now, when we just discard corn husks and such, it seems like a no-brainer to use them as a free input to an ethanol process. But if you actually scale it up you'll run out of source material pretty quickly.

Re: Sweden Runs Out of Garbage With Waste-to-Energy

#55

Post by sebcat »

alipang wrote: post #39
lutorm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... 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.

Well, 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.

I'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.

Re: Sweden Runs Out of Garbage With Waste-to-Energy

#56

Post by total__C »

rquantz wrote: post #4
tlongren wrote: post #2

Ames, 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.

How do they produce safe emissions from trash? They have a hard enough time when burning something where they control the input.

Here's a presentation regarding the 'SYSAV' waste-to-energy facility in Malmö, Sweden:

http://www.sysav.se/upload/flash/sysav.swf

There's an extensive pollution collection/scrubbing system that captures the pollutants as solids and liquids.

Re: Sweden Runs Out of Garbage With Waste-to-Energy

#57

Post by [deleted] »

dmentat wrote: post #13
petercooper wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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 :-(

I 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 f…

[deleted]

Re: Sweden Runs Out of Garbage With Waste-to-Energy

#58

Post by philsnow »

3pt14159 wrote: post #53
gvr wrote: post #46

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…

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 Toro…

> 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.

Re: Sweden Runs Out of Garbage With Waste-to-Energy

#59

Post by codex »

Do 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?

Re: Sweden Runs Out of Garbage With Waste-to-Energy

#60

Post by nixy »

aetherson wrote: post #50
return0 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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-b...

A 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 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 sug…

One 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

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