Regenesi: Plastic Bags for a green Sweden

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Plastic Bags for a green Sweden	Rating: 3.09 \| Votes: 11

Posted on: 03/10/2009 by Silvia Barbero

148 comments

There's no city in Sweden that has followed the green trend of banning plastic bags, even if Swedes love to be green.
To understand this unusual position there are two simple reasons:
1) in Sweden you must put your garbage into the can inside a plastic bag;
2) that bag is one you got (all bags cost around 0.1 euro) at the grocery store, buying garbage bin liners is basically unheard of.
At least 30% of plastic bags must be truly recycled, not just burned in incinerators. Many municipalities let consumers toss all soft plastic packaging into the same bin with hard plastic.
The higher cost of oil as well as new technology that makes it easy to machine-sort all the different plastics has made it more feasible for soft plastic recycling. Once the system is up and running, the 90-odd municipalities that have separate bins for soft plastic will also be diverting their collections to real recycling (right now they send it to a cement kiln to be used as fuel). Recycling the plastic is a great CO2 reducer, according to the Recycling Authority in Sweden, each kilo of recycled plastic "saves" a kilo of carbon dioxide emissions!

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Name, 16/09/2012
Why do I btoehr calling up people when I can just read this!

Name, 03/07/2011
Thanks guys, I just about lost it lokonig for this.

Silvia, 26/10/2009
Thanks, Niina, for your feedback!
The Sweden Government fixed the goal of 30% recicled plastic bags and the method used to recycle them vary from the different municipality because it depends on the process availabile in the nearhood. So each municipality has the responsability to reach that goal.

Niina Kautto, 26/10/2009
You know how it is in Italy, at least I try to show others the importance of bringing your own bag when you shop, but still you have to buy those plastic bags for your bins.

I was not totally sure what you meant by at least 30% must be recycled; is this said by the government? Maybe you could also add a line about a possible requirement to recycle plastics in Sweden to clarify it(and does it vary between different areas/municipalities)?

Silvia, 26/10/2009
Hi Jyri! It works for sure if convience for environment means convience for the wallet (western, eastern, southern... that is!) ;-)

Jyri, 06/10/2009
Makes total sense to me! I wonder how many plastic bags the Swedes consumer every year, and how many kilos of plastic this entails. I guess it would be too much to ask of the modern western convenience-seeking/demanding consumers to bring their shopping bags - that they would use multiple times - from home. In the olden days, and for some even today, shopping bags with wheels represent convenience as you don't have to carry your shopping, you can just roll it. Then again, having your gas-guzzling SUV parked right outside the supermarket makes this suggestion redundant, if not naive. Cheers.

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