Recycling in Sweden Producers responsibility

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 Recycling in Sweden Producers responsibility

• Mathias Skoglund
• St. Petersburg
• 20.06.2006

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Producer responsibility

• Legislation exists in five areas
• packaging
• waste paper
• WEEE (waste from electronic products)
• motor vehicles (not individual spare-parts)
• tyres
• Voluntary commitment for office paper

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Material companies

• Joint recycling companies for the business
  community, on a non-profit basis, that ensures
  fulfillment of the producer responsibility.
• Through REPA, the material companies offer
  private companies a nationwide recycling system
  for their packaging.
• FTI is the joint organ of the material companies
  for information and negotiations with the
  municipalities concerning collection sites,
  sorting etc.

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Packaging

• A producer is anyone who professionally
  manufactures, imports to Sweden or sells
  packaging or a product contained in such
  packaging.
• Producer companies that should join REPA and pay
  packaging fee are
• - The "filler" of the packaging
• - Importer of packed goods
• Manufacturers/importers of service packaging
• The industry pays 450 million SEK per year to
  REPA
• (Distributed this is approximately 140 SEK per
  year and household)
• The producer must provide collection systems and
  make it easy to separate packaging from other
  waste.
• The municipality shall inform households about
  the collection system, their duty to separate
  packaging from waste and the results of these
  actions.

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Waste paper
The legislation defines waste paper as
newspapers, magazines, direct advertising
material, telephone directories, mail order
catalogues and similar paper products. Pressretu
r coordinates the collection and recycling of
waste paper in Sweden. This is done by commercial
contracts with different contractors in different
regions for certain periods. 75 of the consumed
amount of newspapers etc must be collected and
recycled or disposed of in an environmentally
acceptable manner.
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Curb-side collection
Collection at the building which generated the
waste
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Recycling Station
Unmanned, small, station for sorted packaging and
paper 7000 nationwide
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Recycling Centre
Manned, large, facility for sorted large waste,
garden waste, dangerous waste, electonic waste
etc. 700 nationwide
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Statistics
8 out of 10 inhabitants recycle 3 out of 4
packagings are recycled 4 out of 5 newspapers are
recycled
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Other nations
Norway (non EU) Fewer fractions than Sweden, more
automated sorting factories (All paper is mixed
in one bin, coloured/clear glass and metal is
mixed in another bin and plastics in a
third) Good economy for the municipalities due to
differentiated tenders (Oslo was able to lower
their waste fee due to increased income from
selling paper)
United States Some success in single line
curb-side collection (all packaging is sorted in
one bin) Convenient for the inhabitants Expensive
sorting facilities are needed to separate glass,
paper, corrugated cardboard, metal, PET,
aluminium etc. Some manual sorting is still
needed after automated sorting
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Hot topics!
1 Which materials should be collected? 2 Who
should collect the material? 3 Who should sort
it in order to make the material usable? 4 How
should the municipalities retain the value of
it? 5 What feedback and information is needed,
by whom? 6 Timeline, all materials at once or
one at a time?