The finite nature of the world, and the fact that these resources are shared by more and more people, all striving for a more comfortable life, is no secret and the latest manifestation is a growing interest across the world for the concept of Circular Economy. In short, this wide-ranging concept applies the nonlinear nature of biological systems to economy and production.

In a truly sustainable economy the key prerequisite and the biggest challenge has always been to minimise both the dependence on, and the amount of, resources that cannot be used more than once. While we receive a continuous – and ever growing – supply of new energy through the sun, the wind and the movement of water, the things we use and discard must be put to good use as well.

Not too long ago I was made aware of the fact that the Swedish policy of recycling has been so successful that the country today have to import waste at a volume of 800.000 tons of waste per year from its neighboring countries just in order to keep the country’s 32 waste-to-energy plants running; providing heating and electricity for several million of its citizens. 800.000 tons is roughly the equivalent of a cube of soil with a height, width and depth of 80 meters, and this is trash that would otherwise have ended up in Norwegian, Danish or British landfills.

And that’s only the beginning. This import is expected to break the one-million ton barrier in the next few years. At the same time, only about one percent of the waste accumulated in Sweden over a year remains “spent”, neither recycled nor converted to energy.

This way of looking at waste in innovative ways is by no means new. As early as 1896, a livestock company in Stockholm began “leasing” access to local landfills to put pigs out to pasture. As this was a time when almost all waste that ended up in landfills was organic, the 2 000 pigs that roamed the wasteland were well fed at almost no cost and the volume of waste decreased rapidly. Truly a win-win situation.

While the world looks upon the Swedish waste import as an eye-opener, it’s worth remembering that today’s WTE plants are far from perfect and come equipped with their own environmental challenges.

You could also make the valid point, as author and environmental expert Robert Falck, one of the most influential critics of the WTE strategy does, that Sweden should focus on more effective recycling and reuse rather than further increasing its energy dependence on WTE. To put it simple, less import of waste and more export of the sustainable mindset.

But accepting and addressing these challenges in themselves signify the first critical step in conquering them. And considering the fact that the waste converted to heating and electricity would otherwise have remained waste, the current situation is, while imperfect, a big step forward from doing nothing at all.

For the future, a combination of further refining WTE technology to become more efficient with a smaller environmental footprint, when combined with new and improved recycling technologies, will put the world several steps forward on the road towards a circular economy and more sustainability.