Precis

There’s a new push in Australia to build incinerators to burn our waste. Is this the way to go? Those clever Swedes think so. Foreign Correspondent sends War on Waste’s Craig Reucassel to Sweden to investigate.

As Australia grapples with growing piles of waste, the idea of burning it is getting some heavyweight backers, the federal energy minister among them.

So will incineration work? Can it be clean? Is it cost-effective?

And if we invest in this technology at a time when China has stopped taking a lot of our recyclables, will this mean our recyclables end up being burnt?

Sweden is held up as a leader in managing waste. And as one of the world’s biggest innovators, it’s also one of the biggest incinerators.

So War on Waste’s Craig Reucassel goes to Sweden to see if it holds the solution to Australia’s waste crisis.

The Swedes only landfill one per cent of their waste and their government goes so far as to claim a phenomenal 99 per cent recycling rate. In many places, their food waste is collected and made into bio-fuel for their Volvos.

In the capital Stockholm, each time their kerbside wheelie bins are emptied, a sensor beeps and the household gets billed. So if they put their bins out less, they pay less. “We save money just by sorting our garbage,” says resident Sara Jarnhed.

But the centrepiece of Sweden’s waste management strategy is its chain of 34 vast waste furnaces that turn waste into energy for power and heating.

Sweden even makes about $100 million a year from importing waste, burning thousands of tonnes from Britain and other countries who don’t know what else to do with it – and pay Sweden to get rid of it.

Problem solved? Not so fast. As Australia considers whether to go down the incineration road, Craig Reucassel follows the waste trail in Sweden to discover that we do have plenty to learn from Sweden’s experience - but not all of it is good.

Drone shots Elsinore castle

Music

00:00

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Elsinore, the site of historical battles and theatrical tumult.

00:05

Reucassel at Elsinore

Here, Hamlet famously agonised over a decision, so while I’m in the neighbourhood I thought it’s a perfect place for me to ask a burning question.

“To burn or not to burn, that is the question. 

00:09

Reucassel to camera

Whether ‘tis wiser in the earth to bury the junk and plastics of outrageous convenience, or to take energy from a sea of troublesome waste and by burning end them.  Sorry Shakespeare”.

00:22

Stockholm GVs Title over:
foreign correspondent

Music

00:38

Super: Stockholm, Sweden

00:44

Reucassel at river. Super:
reporter
Craig Reucassel

00:58

Episode title:
To Burn or Not to Burn

01:01

Stockholm GVs

01:05

Reucassel on ferry

CRAIG REUCASSEL: I’ve come to Sweden and while I’m enjoying this beautiful city of islands, it’s the much less picturesque part of this country of 10 million that I’ve come to see.  Ever since I became known for going through everyone’s bins, people have come up to me and told me we should copy what Sweden does with its waste.  They burn a lot of it, and turn it into energy.

01:16

Reucassel on bike

This so-called “waste-to-energy” process is becoming the new “go to” solution in Australia.  So I’ve come here to find out if this would be a good fix for our garbage crisis. 

01:47

Reucassel on boat

Our search starts at 5 am, on the Baltic Sea.

01:59

 “Sweden has become known as the darling of the waste world

02:09

Reucassel to camera on boat

and according to the government they recycle 99% of their waste and this boat here is part of the story.  They’re so successful with their waste that now they’re importing it from other countries.  The Swe-Freighter left from England three days ago and on board, 3,000 tonnes of rubbish on its way to Västerås in Sweden, about to be burnt”.

02:13

Swe-Freighter/Unloading rubbish

Sweden is turning other country’s trash into cash.  The bales in this boat will earn them around 200,000 dollars and all up Sweden makes around 100 million dollars a year from this trade. 

02:38

Swe-Freighter/ at incinerator plant

They mix the imports with local rubbish and it’s incinerated in 34 plants dotted around the country. 

02:54

Furnace

They say this is better than Australia’s approach of burying waste in landfill.  The government here even calls it recycling.  But I’m not so sure.

03:04

Incinerator chimney

So I’ve come to this plant at Västerås to see for myself.

03:21

Reucassel into waste plant with Jocke looking at claw

“Oh wow.  Look at this. That is a bit frightening”.

This is supposed to be the stuff that’s left over in the garbage after homes and businesses have taken out all the recycling.

“What do you count this as, as a renewable or a recyclable?”

03:28

Jocke and Reucassel

JOCKE HOOK: “Well, a recyclable, because this is recycling. We’re turning it into energy, so we see it as a kind of recycling”.

03:44

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “For me recycling is taking something and turning it back into a product that can keep going.  I don’t know if burning…”

JOCKE HOOK: “Yes but we turn it into energy.  We turn it into energy so that’s the way we look at it”.

03:52

CRAIG REUCASSEL:  That’s not how I’d look at it, but the plant does try to remove some leftover recyclables.

03:59

Tour of plant

JOCKE HOOK: “We can take out metals, parts of aluminium, glass, sand, smaller rocks and etcetera”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: In what’s left there’s a lot of paper, wood and also plastic.

JOCKE HOOK: [Malarenergi] “The best thing would be,

04:06

Jocke. Super:
Jocke Hook
Malarenergi

of course, to recycle the plastic, but once it has entered the waste, well one the plastic is waste, this is one good way of taking care of it”.

04:19

Jocke and Reucassel into boiler building

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “Wow.  This is where the actual action happens, hey.

04:29

Wow, so this is the boiler. How hot is it?”

JOCKE HOOK: “900 degrees Celsius within the boiler”.

04:39

CRAIG REUCASSEL: And this is what it’s all about. The waste is burnt and it generates both electricity and hot water for heating the town in winter.

04:47

“So how much waste can this burn in an hour?”

JOCKE HOOK: “Sixty tonnes an hour”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “Sixty tonnes of waste an hour”.

04:56

Incinerator chimney

But what’s left over?  In Australia, arguments against burning waste have centred on the question of toxic emissions.

“So can you guarantee that

05:02

Jocke and Reucassel by chimney

there’s not carcinogens and that kind of thing?  What are you actually pumping out there?”

JOCKE HOOK: “There are chemicals in it of course, but they are according to the regulations that we have to follow”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “Yeah.  So, does the Swedish Government monitor what comes out of there?”

JOCKE HOOK: “Oh yes, oh yes they do and we have the highest amounts in all Sweden regarding what comes out of the chimney”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “How does it take everything out? What happens to them, if it takes out all of these toxins, what does it do with it?”

05:12

JOCKE HOOK: “Well, a lot of the toxins are taken out in the burning process, so they are destroyed in the high temperature. It’s about 900 degrees Celsius”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “So the actual heat of that boiler makes a difference to getting rid of the emissions?”

JOCKE HOOK: “That’s part of it.  But also then we wash the fumes”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “You wash the fumes?”

JOCKE HOOK: “We wash the fumes”.

05:39

Exterior of plant

CRAIG: Keeping emissions clean does not come cheap.  This plant cost half a billion dollars to build and 35 million dollars a year to run. But it has some nice little earners, too.  It’s not just paid to take rubbish.  The electricity is worth 10 million dollars a year.  Central heating, though, is the big one.  With 900 kilometres of underground piping to nearly all of the city’s homes, they rake in $65 million a year.

05:58

Reucassel on escalator to train

Music

06:31

CRAIG REUCASSEL: But while the Swedes have found a way to make money from garbage, there are a few things that are still bugging me.  I was really surprised at how much plastic there was in the mix at the waste-to-energy plant.  How does this fit with Sweden’s green energy story?

06:37

Reucassel at café with lunch

 “So Sweden banned landfill many years ago, so if I don’t finish my lunch it’s not going to end up going into landfill and turning into methane gas, which of course is a greenhouse gas.  But, the big question I have, what happens to those things like this plastic packaging that does end up being thrown away, what’s the effect if you’re burning plastic?”

07:06

Meeting with Göran

To find out, I’m meeting with Professor Göran Finnveden, who studied waste-to-energy for many years.

07:32

“What is the effect in terms of emissions of burning plastics?”

07:42

Finnveden. Super:
Professor Goran Finnveden
KTH Royal Institute of Technology

PROFESSOR GÖRAN FINNVEDEN:  “Well, you get CO2 emissions, you get carbon dioxide emissions like if you incinerate oil”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “I can’t believe I’m saying this because I think we come from Australia where most things are buried and I hate the idea of landfill ,but is it sometimes worse to be burning plastics than actually burying them?”

07-47

PROFESSOR GÖRAN FINNVEDEN: “Yes it can be, at least in the short term, because if you incinerate plastic you get the carbon dioxide emissions immediately, whereas if you bury them, it will take a long time before they degrade.  But there can be other problems with landfill.  It takes up space, you can have leachate coming out or toxic chemicals etcetera”.

08:05

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “To what extent is recycling rather than burning beneficial?”

PROFESSOR GÖRAN FINNVEDEN: “Recycling is almost always, there can be exceptions, but almost always more beneficial both from an energy perspective and from the perspective of emissions”.

08:25

Drone over houses

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Those that oppose waste-to-energy also say it gives an easy out for waste and discourages recycling, but Sweden sees itself as a leader in the recycling world.  So I’m keen to see how the locals are keeping these resources away from the furnaces.

08:47

Reucassel knock on door

[knocking on home door] “Hello, I’m Craig.  How are you?”

SARAH JARNHED: “I’m Sarah, nice to meet you”.

WILDA JARNHED: “Hello, my name is Wilda”.

SARAH JARNHED: “Well come on in and I’ll show you the kitchen”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “Thank you”.

I’ve arranged to meet Sarah Jarnhed

09:03

Reucassel into recycling cupboard with Sarah

and her family who’ve been kind enough to let me see what the do with their garbage.

09:20

SARAH JARNHED: “So this is where we keep the dry”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “Oh this is recycling”.

SARAH JARNHED: “Oh yeah, this is where that magic happens. 

09:24

I get plastic, we get the plastic here”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “So any kind of plastic you put in there”.

SARAH JARNHED: “Yes every -- the dry plastic”.

09:31

CRAIG REUCASSEL:  They go to a lot of trouble to sort waste into different categories here.

SARAH JARNHED: “And then we have, here we put glass and batteries and cans”.

09:37

CRAIG REUCASSEL: And they have a bottle refund scheme, too.

SARAH JARNHED: “See a little bit of money… so this is good for the kids”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “So you get the kids to do that?”

SARAH JARNHED: “Yes, then they get the money for that and they can buy an ice-cream”.

09:49

Wilda playing with toys

CRAIG REUCASSEL:  Wilda and her brother get the message at home and also at school, recycling is good and everyone has to do it.

10:01

Richard and son arrive home. Sarah and Reucassel in kitchen

[husband and son arriving home] “Hello, I’m Craig, how are you?

RICHARD JARNHED: “I’m Richard.  I’m fine”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “Richard, how are you?”

10:10

Sarah with son

SARAH JARNHED: [to son] “How was football?”

YOUNG BOY: “Good!”

10:17

Reucassel looks at groceries

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “It’s just like Australia, everything’s put in plastic now”.

10:19

This is starting to feel a bit more like home. Sweden seems to have the same over packaging problems I looked at in Australia.

RICHARD JARNHED: “That is the good bananas so they really have the bad bananas without the plastic but these expensive ones they have in plastic for no reason”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “In plastic, yeah, yeah, exactly”.

10:23

Sarah cutting cucumber

But this is different. Their food waste is collected separately and turned into fuel for buses and cars.

10:40

Reucassel looks under sink at compost bin

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “Another bin.  So there’s not much in there”.

RICHARD JARNHED: “No”.

10:46

CRAIG REUCASSEL: What’s left and it isn’t much, is destined to be burnt but there’s a neat incentive to keep that down to a minimum too.

10:52

Richard and Sarah

RICHARD JARNHED: “The sensor in the bin it sounds when you empty…”

SARAH JARNHED: “Yeah it goes blip blip and then they send the bill to us”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “So if you put your bin out less, you pay less as well?”

SARAH JARNHED: “Yes, yes”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “That’s great”.

Like most Swedes they don’t mind the idea of burning waste to generate energy.

10:59

SARAH JARNHED: “I mean it’s better than burying it I think, because burying it I think is quite crazy. At least you get something out of it”.

11:17

RICHARD JARNHED: “Yes I think it’s good because they heat up the houses “.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “So you think those of us that are burying it, we’re crazy?”

SARAH JARNHED: “You’re crazy”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “We’re crazy apparently”.

SARAH JARNHED: Crazy nation.

11:26

Richard and children pick up recycling bags and load into car

But the recycling isn’t done yet.

11:33

CRAIG REUCASSEL: We have to take it to the local collection bins.

11:40

 “So how much is this worth? About a month or more than a month?”

RICHARD JARNHED: “Yeah maybe a month”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “A month or so?”

RICHARD JARNHED: “Yes, I would say so.

11:42

Son in  back of car

Come on little man”.

YOUNG BOY: “No!”.

RICHARD JARNHED: “You want to stay there?”

YOUNG BOY: “Yes!”.

RICHARD JARNHED: “Ok then. Bye!”

11:49

Drive to recycle bins

CRAIG REUCASSEL: The bins are only a few minutes away and we’re not the only ones doing our duty.

11:57

People loading bins

Music

12:03

Reucassel with woman at bins

CRAIG REUCASSEL:  “So how often do you come down to recycle your stuff?”

WOMAN: “At least once a day”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “Once a day?”

WOMAN: “Yeah because everything is in plastic today and I think it’s just stupid.  I don’t know if it’s

12:13

recycling or they just burn it”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “Well that’s interesting so you actually bring it down here but you don’t know if they actually recycle it”.

WOMAN: “Yeah, yeah but I do, I think I do right but I don’t know what happens in the end”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “Yeah, yeah well that’s interesting you say that.  We want to know that, too”.

WOMAN: “You find out”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “We’ll find out and we’ll tell you, yeah”.

WOMAN: “And you tell me”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “Yes we’ll tell you”.

12:27

Richard and children into car

12:50

Reucassel to camera by recycling bins

“Well Richard and Sarah and so many other Swedes seem to be really conscientious about their sorting and their recycling, and it’s great to see.  I mean one woman turned up here today on a bicycle to do it.  But it’s a lot more effort. I mean it’s not just picked up at your kerbside.  So the thing I really want to know is, is this leading to higher rates of recycling because if it’s not, it’s leading to higher rates of recyclables being burnt”.

12:56

Drone shot. Car over bridge

Music

13:20

Reucassel driving

CRAIG REUCASSEL: In Sweden, the producers that make the packaging are responsible for its recycling. The rates for glass and paper are sky high. But for plastics, the thing I’m most concerned about, I’ve heard there may be some real problems. 

13:27

So I'm on my way to visit Sweden's biggest plastics recycler.  They haven’t been returning our calls. For this long journey south, I’ve, perhaps unwisely, chosen a tiny blue electric car.  While I like the idea that my car is partly fuelled by waste, it doesn’t stop me fearing I’m going to run out of charge well before my destination.

13:43

Reucassel getting out of car at charge station

“I’ve got range anxiety and I don’t know how to charge a car.  I think I have to be some kind of registered user or something.  I hope I don’t have to eat McDonalds to get my car charged”.

14:10

Reucassel on phone

“Hi do you speak English.  Oh thank you, that’s great.  I’m just, I’ve never charged an electric car before, I’m at a Fortum charge station at a McDonalds, how do I pay for it and get it to charge?  Yeah, I’ve done that.  Okay and, yeah, it’s working!  It’s charging, thank you! Thank you very much for your help.  Now what do I do?”

14:28

Driving continues

15:03

With full charge, and indigestion, we finally arrive at the plastics recycling company called SWEREC.

15:09

Drone shot, mounds of plastic

“We’ve definitely found our plastics recycling place.  There’s absolute mounds of it here”.

15:19

Drone over plastic

Music

15:25

Reucassel sitting in car

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “Now SWEREC are meant to recycle 80% of this, but an audit was done a couple of years ago and found out they were recycling less than 40% and the rest of it was being incinerated.  Let’s see if things have changed”.

15:53

Reucassel into SWEREC office

 “Hello, how are you?  My name is, I wonder if we could speak to Lief Karlsson.  My name is Craig Reucassel. I’ve come from Foreign Correspondent”.

Though very polite, SWEREC isn’t keen to talk.

16:11

Reucassel to camera in carpark

Woman approaches

Woman places hand over camera

 “Well sadly, it looks like no one is willing to talk to us about how recycling is done here.

[woman approaches] “Hello, how are you?”

WOMAN: “Hello.  Can you turn off the camera?”

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “Turn off the camera?  Yeah sure”.

WOMAN: “What are you doing?”

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “We’re just, we’re keen to talk to Lief Karlsson who’s not here”.

WOMAN: “No”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “And so we’re just saying…”

WOMAN: “We haven’t given you any permission to film”.

16:29

Cars on freeway

16:54

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Well that didn’t get us very far, so I’m heading further up the chain of command. 

16:57

Reucassel into FTI with Hakan

This is FTI, they’re the industry group that organises most of the packaging recycling in Sweden and contracts SWEREC.  Surely, they know how much plastic is recycled and how much is burnt.

17:03

“When Swedish people are putting all this plastic into recycle

17:16

Hakan. Super:
Hakan Strom
FTI

and then for instance SWEREC was only recycling about 38% of it and the rest was being incinerated, that’s nowhere near enough recycling is it?”

HAKAN STROM: [FTI] “Firstly, they broke our contract and that’s not okay, of course, and there was a very, very harsh discussion between us and we were not very happy with that”.

17:20

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “How much plastic packaging is meant to be recycled?”

HAKAN STROM: “The government says it should be 30% and we are up on 47% in Sweden”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: But it turns out, those figures aren’t what’s being recycled, only what’s being collected.

17:38

“Does that have to be recycled or is there only a percentage of that has to be recycled?”

HAKAN STROM: “It’s what sent to be sorted”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “To be sorted”.

HAKAN STROM: “Sorted for recycling and it doesn’t state how much that needs to be recyclable”.

17:53

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “So what proportion then of the plastic packaging you get, do you burn?”

HAKAN STROM: “I don’t have that, I don’t have that”.

18:05

Drone shots. Bales of plastic

CRAIG REUCASSEL: While FTI are keen to promote their plastic collection rates, the figures that really matter are those that were reported to the government, which show that less than a third was being recycled and the rest, 70% was burnt.

18:11

And when you look at Sweden’s total plastic usage, and not just packaging, it’s worse.  A recent report found that a whopping 84% is ending up at the incinerators.

18:29

Incinerator

18:44

Oresond Bridge to Denmark

Music

18:51

CRAIG REUCASSEL:  None of this is making much of a stir in Sweden.  In fact, waste-to-energy isn’t really an issue here, but across the other side of this famous bridge, there is a storm brewing in the rest of Europe.

19:00

I’m meeting with zero waste campaigner, Joan-Marc Simon in Copenhagen, in the shadow of a controversial new waste to energy plant surrounded by apartments.

19:12

Apartments near waste to energy plan

To quell local opposition to this $860 million dollar plant, the designers even included an artificial ski slope on its roof.  At a state-of-the-art plant like this, Joan-Marc’s concerns aren’t so much about toxic pollutants, but the burning of resources.

JOAN-MARC SIMON: [Zero Waste Europe] “It’s a huge investment and we have to think like

19:26

Joan-Mac and Reucassel on street near apartments. Super:
Joan-Marc Simon
Zero Waste Europe

where do we want to put the money?  Into preserving resources or into destroying resources?  These are very efficient machine to destroy resources.  And I would say like probably it will capture most of the pollutants, but it’s still a machine to destroy resources.  What we have proven is that for a lot less money, you can preserve resources, you can like invest in local jobs and like keep the money in the community”.

CRAIG REUCASSEL: The EU seems to be taking a similar view,

19:57

Apartments near plant

bringing in new laws to divert more waste into recycling.  Rates right across Europe will have to rise from the current 50% up to 65% by 2035 and the materials will have to be genuinely recycled, collection figures won’t do anymore.

JOAN-MARC SIMON: “So it is clear that in the

20:21

Joan-Marc Simon

future we're going to see incinerators closing down in Europe because they're going to have less and less waste to burn and recycling is going to go up”.

20:39

CRAIG REUCASSEL: “Are there other countries that have gone the other way, have kind of invested in increasing the recycling rather than waste-to-energy for instance.”

JOAN-MARC SIMON:   “Yes, we have examples in Europe where are seeing cities actually being a lot more advanced than Copenhagen with a lot less investment get a lot further, like for example, Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, half a million people, they don’t have an incinerator, they’re recycling in the order of 65%, which is like more than twice as much as Copenhagen with a lot less investment and they’re recycling a lot more”.

20:50

Oresond Bridge

Music

21:21

Reucassel driving back to Sweden

CRAIG REUCASSEL: Heading back to Sweden, I wonder if I should have visited a country that's focussed on recycling instead - probably a bit late to ask for a side trip to Slovenia.  For Australia, it’s a question of where we invest our money. Waste-to-energy is an expensive option and one thing that has been troubling me about how suitable the Swedish model is for Australia.

21:30

Waste to energy plant

Every plant I visit talks more about heating than electricity. So I’ve got one final question, and I’ve found the person that can answer it.

21:53

Reucassel with Weine

“In Australia, we don’t have the heating capacity, we don’t have central heating, district heating or even district cooling, or anything like that. Does that mean it’s less efficient for Australia to invest in waste to energy for instance?”

22:03

Super:
Weine Wiqvist
Waste Association of Sweden

WEINE WIQVIST: [Waste Association of Sweden] “Absolutely, that is the case.  Unfortunately, if you only use the electricity of course the energy efficiency in the plant will be much lower than what you can find in Sweden and other parts of the world where you also have district heating. So that will make the whole calculation less efficient.  But still you have to consider what’s the alternative?”

22:16

Reucassel charges electric car

CRAIG REUCASSEL: It’s becoming very clear that incineration is not a one-size-fits-all solution

22:38

[charging car] “Charging a car at a waste-to-energy plant, it kind of feels like oh, I’m burning trash to make this car move, but the reality is a bit more complex than that.  Here in Sweden it’s summer now and most of the furnaces have been turned off here and that’s because nearly 90% of the energy from waste-to-energy in Sweden is used for heating.  So what does that mean for Australia?  Are we going to put in cooling systems, which can happen, but it requires us to dig up all the streets in our cities and put complex sets of pipes taking the cooling to all the houses. I don’t know if we’re the kind of country that’s going to do that kind of thing. I mean we’d probably end up with something like cooling to the node”.

22:47

Midsummer festival

Music

23:24

CRAIG REUCASSEL:  None of this bothers the Swedes as they head for their popular midsummer festival. Sarah Richard and the kids have joined the throng to dance like frogs and frolic around the Maypole.

2342

SARAH JARNHED: “I always thought it was a cross but then I learnt, somebody told me that it’s actually an

23:57

Sarah Jarnhed at festival

old tradition from the Vikings that we share with fertility.  And so actually it’s not a cross, it's a huge dick so we dance around and celebrate fertility.  But I’m not sure that it’s true, but that’s what everybody does so and I love the idea. I think it’s beautiful because this is when everything starts growing, so yeah, it’s amazing.  A crazy Swedish tradition that we do”.

24:05

Midsummer festival

CRAIG REUCASSEL: This is the height of summer, it’s a time for schnapps and songs, before they head into the long bitter winter where during the 18 hour nights, with sub-zero temperatures they’ll be warmed by burning the nation’s waste.

24:35

Hogdalen waste-to-energy plant

Not far from the Maypole and the dancing, Stockholm’s Hogdalen waste-to-energy plant chuffs away, sitting side by side with a recycling yard.  Here it seems like the perfect place to return to that burning question.

[standing by Hogdalen] “The more I’ve travelled around Sweden, the more I’ve realised they are very much interconnected. Waste-to-energy is not just a simple solution to our waste problems.

24:53

Reucassel to camera

If you don’t sort out your recycling, then basically you’re going to be burning a lot of plastic – which is just a low-grade oil. At best, well done waste-to-energy can be a step up from landfill, but it’s still very much at the bottom of the scale – and you’ve got to invest big time into recycling, and avoiding waste in the first place”.

25:19

Drone shot over plastic and waste plant.
Credits:

Presenter - Craig Reucassel

Producer - Deborah Richards

Camera - Mathew Marsic

Editor - Nikki Stevens

Assistant editor – Tom Carr

Executive Producer - Marianne Leitch

foreign correspondent
abc.net.au/foreign
[logo]

© 2018

25:38

Out point after credits:

26:07