Technical Development of Waste Sector in Sweden: Survey

MASTER’S THESIS IN ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGIES RESEARCH
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background
Waste can be considered as an urban burden or as a valuable resource depending on how it is
managed. Therefore, management of municipal solid waste (MSW) is becoming more resource
oriented and environmentally sustainable now. Sweden has set up explicit goals to manage municipal
waste in a sustainable manner. Life cycle thinking is important for waste management system to
assist the EU waste framework directive (EUROPEN, 2006). However, LCA of waste is dealing with
one phase of the life cycle.
Sweden has tried to manage municipal solid waste in an environmentally sound manner. However,
this initiative is facing different social, economical and environmental problems in the present waste
management sector. Colossal amounts (4,717,380 tonnes) of household waste in Sweden are
managed by the four treatment methods: material recycling, biological treatment, waste-to-energy
and landfill (Avfall Sverige, 2008). Undeniably, the an increase of 23.8 percent in household waste
generation during the last decade has propelled to treat waste with newest and incinerating
technologies. This by far, has gained much importance while on the other hand; land filling has
reduced by 81.7 per cent in the past decade (Avfall Sverige, 2008). A complex composition of MSW
consisting of paper, glass, chemical, metal, organic and other waste fractions, makes it difficult to
treat solid waste by the waste treatment technologies. Moreover, global climate change has shifted
the thinking of waste management problems traditional way to the sustainable way of solving the
problems.
A mega project called “Tools for Sustainable Waste Management” financed by Swedish
Environmental Protection Agency is being carried out with cooperation from different institutes to
find out a sustainable and future oriented solution for waste management system in Sweden (KTH,
2009). The project aims to foresee the emerging technology in long time perspective in the context
of life cycle assessment (LCA). This master’s thesis is a part of the project and the study aims to
contribute in the project through analyzing background study of the waste management system in
Sweden. As a part of the project, the study also examined the possible ways of analyzing emerging
technologies development trends based on past development and though LCA decision support tool.
Different waste management decision support tools like cost benefit analysis, multi-criteria analysis
are available now. Life Cycle Assessment tool is one of the effective tools to assess the flow
dynamics of the resources and can give us the idea on potential environmental burdens per kg or
tonne of waste generated (Ekvall et. al., 2007). Moreover, it would be easier to assess the
environmental suitability of a new and emerging technology through LCA model. Therefore, a
strategic planning for sustainable waste management system is necessary for the future development.
The success of waste management planning and policy relies on the forecasting and design of the
technical development of waste treatment technologies in the future. Sweden has thus taken up the
challenge to find out potential future solutions for waste management problems and hence draw
KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HÖGSKOLAN
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