POST
PRODUCTION
SCRIPT
FOREIGN
CORRESPONDENT
2018
To
Burn or Not to Burn
26
mins 07 secs
©2018
ABC
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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. |
|
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As Australia grapples with growing
piles of waste, the idea of burning it is getting some heavyweight backers,
the federal energy minister among them. |
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So will incineration work? Can it be
clean? Is it cost-effective? |
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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? |
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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. |
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So War on Waste’s Craig Reucassel goes
to Sweden to see if it holds the solution to Australia’s waste crisis. |
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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. |
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|
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. |
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|
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. |
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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. |
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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: |
Music |
00:38 |
Super:
Stockholm, Sweden |
|
00:44 |
Reucassel
at river. Super: |
|
00:58 |
Episode
title: |
|
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: |
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 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: |
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: |
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]
“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. |
Presenter - Craig Reucassel Producer - Deborah Richards Camera - Mathew Marsic Editor - Nikki Stevens Assistant editor –
Tom Carr Executive Producer - Marianne Leitch foreign correspondent © 2018 |
25:38 |
Out
point after credits: |
|
26:07 |