SWEDISH WASTE MANAGEMENT |2010 - Avfall Sverige

SWEDISH WASTE MANAGEMENT 2010
HAZARDOUS WASTE
In 2009, 45,380 tons of hazardous waste was
collected from households, an increase of 4.8
percent compared to 2008. On average, 4.9
kg of hazardous waste per Swedish resident
was handed in. The figures include impregnated
wood, a fraction which has steadily
increased over recent years and today constitutes
55 percent of all hazardous waste from
households. In 2009, 24,760 tons of impregnated
wood was collected, an increase of 16
percent compared to the year before.
Hazardous waste, including impregnated
wood, represented 1 percent of the household
waste.
Hazardous waste can be toxic, carcinogenic,
corrosive, mutagenic, ecotoxic, infectious, or
flammable. Hazardous substances may occur
in very small amounts in some products, but
could all together cause great damage if they
end up in the wrong place. It is therefore important
that hazardous waste is separated from
other waste and handed in correctly.
Local authorities are responsible for hazardous
household waste. The responsibility
encompasses collection, transport, and treatment.
The responsibility is regulated by the
Environmental Code, the Waste Collection and
Disposal Ordinance, and the Municipal Waste
Regulation Ordinance.
Households are responsible for separating
hazardous waste from other household waste.
It is regulated in the Municipal Waste
Regulation Ordinance.
At a national level, Sweden lacks a follow-up
system for hazardous waste from industries
and other types of businesses. There are no
precise statistics of the amounts of hazardous
waste from industries, but according to the
official Swedish waste statistics, reported to
the EU by the Swedish Environmental
Protection Agency, Swedish households and
enterprises produced 2.8 million tons of hazardous
waste in 2006, including scrap vehicles,
electrical waste etc.
The most common collection system for the
hazardous household waste is through drop off
at the manned municipal recycling centers.
Several municipalities have stopped using the
unmanned recycling stations and have instead
introduced curbside collection. Approximately
one third of all municipalities in the country
offer curbside collection, often in combination
with several other collection systems.
Hazardous waste handed to collection or
treatment facilities often require pre-treatment
in order to facilitate further treatment. Since
hazardous waste may contain substances
which are to be phased out of the ecocycle, the
treatment often aims at destroying these substances.
Substances which cannot be rendered
harmless or be reused will be disposed
to landfills. In these cases it is important that
the waste is chemically and physically stable
so hazardous substances do not leak out to
surrounding areas.
New treatment methods for recycling hazardous
waste have been developed, which
involve the separation of hazardous substances
and recycling of the remaining parts. The
method is used for treatment of, for instance,
paint tins and oil filters. Toxic and poorly degradable
substances, such as pesticides and
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