Several countries are very advanced in diverting municipal waste from landfills, often due to the implementation of national measures to reduce landfilling of municipal waste. Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, Denmark and Belgium have reported landfill rates below 5 %. In Sweden and Denmark, there has been a ban on landfilling combustible waste since 2002 and 1997 respectively. The waste has to be recycled, treated by anaerobic digestion or incinerated. This strategy gives these two countries the highest incineration rates for municipal waste in the EU-27, with 49 % and 48 % respectively, matched only by the incineration rate of Switzerland (49 %). These three countries, together with France, were the only ones with landfill rates below 80 %, where the amounts incinerated equalled or exceeded the amounts recycled or composted. Mostly, the countries with low landfill rates had a larger combined share of recycling and composting than incineration. Landfilling rates in the Netherlands fell in the 1990s as a result of recycling, composting and incineration of municipal waste. A further reduction occurred when the direct disposal of mixed municipal waste was banned as of 2003, resulting in only 4 kg per capita municipal waste directly landfilled in 2009. In Sweden, the landfilled amounts dropped from 64 kg per capita in 2003 to 7 kg per capita in 2009 after the introduction of a landfill ban on organic material in 2005. Resource: [epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/...]
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 21:09:33 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015