Amazing Race to Zero Waste

In this Crbnly Conversations episode, we spill our weekly carbon-lay deeds before plunging into Sweden's recycling scene. From impressive recycling rates to cool tricks like compressed air and waste-to-energy, we dissect the Swedes' recycling finesse. Producers, homes, and businesses all play a part, and we bid adieu with a promise of more eco-gems on social media. Recycling in Sweden? It's a breeze! 🌍♻️ #CrbnlyRecycles

Useful Resources
The Amazing Race - Sort or Serve
The Swedish recycling revolution | sweden.se
Responsibilities - Avfall Sverige
Turning Waste to Energy: Sweden’s Recycling Revolution
Our history, values and strategic philanthropy - IKEA
Let’s close the loop | Repair & recycle | H&M
Country comparison: Sweden / United States
Pneumatic waste disposal: Swedish company’s pneumatic vacuum tubes suck trash away
Magic Waste Tubes

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Transcript

0:30

All right, welcome back, Carbon Lee listeners. We have another episode of Carbon Lee Conversations for you. I'm Shane, I've got my buddy Chad here with me. Hey, happy day to y'all. Happy holidays to everyone. Hope everyone's staying healthy and warm out there. And if you didn't know, now you know that we are, we wanna remind everyone that we are a podcast where friends examine the intersection of community, lifestyle and consumption in our lives. The Carbony Conversations was created in hopes for us to share our stories and our curiosity to motivate actions in order to lessen our carbon footprint. And we want to try to use our platform to create a space for listeners, community members to share their Carvenly journeys as well. And please never forget to follow us on social media, Instagram, uh, Twitter X, TikTok. And we also have a YouTube page. If you just type in Carvenly conversations on YouTube, um, you know, follow like support comment, anything you want to do. And we appreciate the support as always. And we try to make it very convenient for you to listen to us. All you need to do is scroll down to our show notes, click on find and join the conversation. And that'll give you access to all of our episodes on any podcast platform that you use. And we Wednesday is our release date. So we try to try to hit you with some new content every Wednesday. some of that groovy album cover thumbnails that Shane tricks the computers into doing for us. Yeah, yeah, we're getting more creative. You know, we hope everyone has a good laugh and enjoys our thumbnails. I share them around because I just giggle every time. Shane, you're a maestro with that robot. This one will be a fun one, you know? So I also want to give a shout out to the Columbus crew. We won our third championship MLS cup yesterday and that was here in Columbus. And so the city was very packed. Will Ferrell was in town because he's part, no, he's part owner of the LA team. So he was in town, that was big. He actually like rented out this whole like bar. and invited all of the LA fans for like a pre-game rally. So it was kind of cool. It was big deal here in Columbus, Ohio. Yeah, home of the Ohio State Buckeyes, but yet not the number one football team. It's the, I mean, football, Columbus crew is, yeah. And they actually use their feet most of the time to kick the ball around versus the Buckeyes. that's for sure. Use your hands, it's a penalty. But yeah, I just wanted to give them a shout out. That's always a good thing for a city like Columbus. It definitely helps with the growth to have like this professional sports team and that can actually win a championship. Yeah, and it's a good call out back to our scoring big on sustainability episode number 59. I think we released that on October 25th, where we talked about what colleges and universities do during those large sporting events to recycle, which kind of like segues us into this conversation today. But go find us in that catalog. And hopefully the Columbus crew, they, they got all that recycling set up kind of like what we're going to find out. how Sweden has set up their recycling. Like that would be probably, I heard it today, thebomb.com. We'll just bring it back to life for this week only, bomb.com. So tell us more, Shane. What are we in store for today? Well, I figured we think it's been a while since we've done what we've done. Our what have you done this week to be carbonly? So I think that would be fun to kick it off. Um, I guess I can start out with myself personally. I, uh, I recently was, was on the market to buy a new desk. Um, I used to have one of those desks that they became very popular during like COVID and everything. The ones that you can stand up. You can. move them up and down. And I just found myself not really utilizing it for what it was. It didn't have much desktop space, things like that. So I was like, man, I really wanna get a new desk. So I was able to, I was able to sell my old desk on Facebook Marketplace for about the same price that I purchased it for because I bought it at, if anyone listens to some of our earlier episodes. I used to purchase a lot of things from a local auction. So it was like a lot of like Amazon and different stores like that returns. So I think I bought the desk for like brand new, maybe $65, $70 in the box. So I sold it on marketplace for 50 bucks. It sold really quickly because it was a great deal. And then instead of going out and buying a brand new desk, I wanted one of those, I forget what they're called. But there are those, if you remember like back in the day, especially like in workshops or something like that, they have like those big metal desks. I wish I knew the name. it a drafting desk? Like a big old top? No. Do they have a bunch of cubby holes, like a foreman's desk? No, there's drawers and different things like that. So that was one of the downsides to my old desk is there were no drawers. It was just the desktop. So anyway, I had in mind exactly what type of desk I wanted and it just so happened that someone in my neighborhood was giving away a free desk. So, and basically they just wanted it out of their house. They had it for years. It's in great condition. I'll try to send some pic, add some pics on our social media for everybody. But yeah, ended up getting a free desk, the exact type of desk that I wanted. And even cooler it, uh, it came from. If anyone's familiar with the Franklin's in the area, we have 400 West Ridge Street, which is this old warehouse that they've turned into like art galleries. Um, so the desk actually came from there. That's where the person that I got it from bought it there. a desk with a story. With a story, a lot of history, and it's been reused plenty, plenty of times. So that was kind of my way of being Carverly instead of going out and buying a brand new desk. That's super carbon-lay. And you up-cycled your old one, someone else is using it. Like, that's very carbon-lay responsible. Responsibility, that's probably a good way to put it. I mean, I'm just gonna re-share what I do most of the time, Shane, on what I've been doing. Oh, did I freeze? Are my words coming through? So, lots of work. Lots of travel between locations, meaning I'm on the streets of New York all the time. So I've just been picking up nails and screws as I go. Like this week in Carbon Lay is kind of like most weeks in Carbon Lay. It's like, how can I make everything around me just a little bit better? Sharing some of those stories. I will share that in New York, some of you guys may know like a whole bunch of Christmas tree farms, come in and set up shop, maybe every four or six blocks. So New Yorkers don't have to leave the city to go get their fresh, freshly cut Christmas tree, hopefully all in a sustainable way. But many of them like they trim the bows, they have all this excess waste. And one of my neighbors, he actually convinced the one that's right down the corner to collect, he was able to get for free all of their excess bows. He used it to make a wreath. He used it to like fill the, around the trees on the sidewalk and the little like. corner squares like and just to make it a little bit more nice keep the rodents at bay so that's like a carbonly hack also for this week I didn't do any of that myself but we did decide instead of buying a Christmas tree we bought a rosemary bush so that way we can decorate it have a little holiday spirit and use it to cook with as we as the holiday season goes yeah so yeah so I won't feel guilty about getting rid of it because we will actually consume most of it We'll have to, you'll have to post a, take a picture and put that up on the Instagram page. I'd like to see that. That's a great idea. idea. So this week in Carbonly. Yeah, there you have it folks. Hope you enjoy that segment. But we wanted to do another episode where we kind of, our last episode we had the TED Talk video that we all enjoyed. So hopefully you like that style of conversation. I think it makes it even more of a reason for you all to visit our. YouTube channel and maybe check it out on video if you haven't yet, but This week I wanted to share so So I have kind of a guilty pleasure and I'm a fan of the Amaz- the show amazing the amazing race Popular show I'm sure some of you out there listen, you know tune into it. It's on its 35th season So obviously it's doing well around a while. It's been around for a while. I don't watch every season, but for whatever reason, I kind of started watching this season and kind of like enjoyed it. So I'm like, hey, let's tune into this every week. So a couple episodes ago, as you know, they travel the world and different things like that, but a couple episodes, they were in Sweden. And they... They had a challenge basically that tied into recycling. So what we'll do to kind of kick this off is we'll share quick 40 second or so clip of that. But I didn't know personally of everything that Sweden is doing as far as recycling. We titled this episode, the amazing race to zero waste. And the deeper, so that... That episode of the Amazing Race made me dive a little bit deeper into like, let me see what Sweden's doing to make it, you know, such a popular thing and such the huge effect that they have. Um, so I did a little deep diving and kind of found some more cool info out about how they recycle, um, that I think would be good to share with you all. So, uh, but we'll kick this off first with the, uh, with the video, the short clip. And that's my favorite team there, the guy in the red shirt and his son. I like that subway station. Looks like an interior cavern. Crazy. Hehe. That's where it ends because then it goes into like the other part of the challenge. So what? Edit that out a little bit so if I heard the one stat, they said 99% of locally produced consumer goods are recycled. Yeah. that does have a caveat in the sense like, so if they import stuff, like are they able to recycle that, right? Like is it, like good question I think to explore there in future episodes, but the fact that they have a system set up and everything's sorted in their centers for it, like that's insane compared to what we experience. And they definitely have put, unfortunately within where of course they're in the United States, we don't have that many things manufactured here as we used to at least. But what Sweden has done is really put a lot of the responsibility on the manufacturers if they're wanting to sell their product. They have a lot of guidelines, which definitely helps. And as you see, 99% of things are made from recycled products or whatnot. So like the Swedish environmental code, so under the Swedish environmental code, each municipality is responsible for ensuring that household waste within that municipality is transported and recycled and disposed of. So that, I guess, is. similar to the United States, but recycling is not really a requirement here. You know, it's just kind of if you want to do it, you do it. yeah, some places are, but it varies from municipality to municipality. And you just to double click what you just said, make sure I heard it correctly is across Sweden, every municipality is required to sort and recycle. Yep. And then so each municipality is required by law to have its own waste and sanitation ordinance, which consists of a waste plan and regulations for the waste management. So I mean, and we'll just keep tying it back to the United States. I think here it's really privatized. There's these private companies that handle a majority of that. So To me, that might be a little downside to it, but. Freedom. Freedom to waste. Yeah, so going back to like responsibilities, so the responsibilities of the producers, so Sweden has produced a responsibility for packaging, waste electrical and electrical equipment, tires, cars, batteries, and pharmaceuticals. And then within that, the producers are responsible for collecting and disposing of end of life products, which is amazing idea. So that basically means that there must be a suitable collection system and treatment methods for recycling if they want to sell their product. got it. So they've in essence regulated and then built the resources to support a circular economy. Exactly and they it's funny in one of the in one of the One of the articles that I found they highlighted that H&M I forget the name of their program where they can take they'll take back old clothes and break that down and make new materials out of And things like that, but that that's kind of an example. So like let's say we'll use that as an example It was it's a requirement there for H&M to provide that Program in every single one of their stores in order to have that store They have to be able to take back their old product and then do something with it Got it. And H&M is a Swedish company, Swedish brand. Yeah. is IKEA Swedish? I think so. I know they sell Swedish meatballs in their little cafeteria. So I think they are. Um, yes, it started in the Swedish town of Åmhult in the 1940s with an enterprising boy who hoped to improve the lives of people. There we go. IKEA probably has that same program. And what's interesting just because we, I mean, we flirted with talking about that H&M program way back in the early days of this podcast on the thrifting episode. But we knew about it, but now we know why that, probably why H&M does that. Like it's, you know, maybe they're all truelistic and they would have done it anyways, but if they're a company in Sweden, they have to do it. Right, they have to do it. And then along with responsibilities of the producers, there's also, so the responsibility of households is households are responsible for separating and depositing waste at available collection points. And they must also follow the municipality's rules for waste management. So it's an actual requirement, like I said, here in the US. It's not, you can throw whatever you want to throw into your garbage can and then it's up to that waste management company to I guess sort that out as best as they could but With all the garbage that we throw out in the united states That's nearly impossible for them to really Truly, you know get things sorted out Yep. And then for businesses, businesses are responsible for disposing of non-household waste and waste that is not covered by producer responsibility. So that that's an even extra layer where it's like, okay, I didn't produce this product, but I'm selling it. So I'm also responsible. You know what I mean? They've assigned responsibility and accountability to that for their waste treatment. It is possible. Yeah, it is possible. You know, of course, Sweden has a way lower population than we do, so I mean, that'll be kind of the argument, I guess, of like, well, yeah, they can do it because their population is way lower, things like that, which I understand that, but if we treated it, if each maybe state or major city treated what Sweden does, I think that would be the start. But yeah, those are kind of the responsibility. And then some of the statistics I found were pretty good. So this is all according to the Swedish EPA. So 4.6 million tons of household waste was managed in 2020, which equals to about 449 kilos per person per year. So like I said, with their lower population than us, just imagine like if you were to kind of put that into the United States data of number of population, how larger that number could be. 54% of household waste and similar waste was turned into energy in 2020, which we'll get more into that. But that is really amazing that it's not just the waste was not put into landfill, but it was actually used to generate energy. you know. Yeah, they're burning it or converting it to something. Yeah. Yep. So, and then, so 86% of PET bottles, which I'm assuming is plastic, and then 87% of aluminum cans in the deposit system were recycled in 2020. The national target is 90% of both. But I mean, 86% of plastic bottles and 87% of cans recycled. Like, that's amazing. That's amazing. And then 61% of all packaging material was recycled in 2020. Their target is 65%. So they're definitely on track to really meet their targets. And I mean, those targets are pretty big anyway. So That's good. Yeah, so while you were talking, I pulled up a couple stats. So this area, the geography, the size of Sweden is a little bit bigger than the state of California. California is like one of the bigger states in the United States. Sweden has 10.5 million people. Again, this is world data, 2020 data. United States has like... 330 million people, right? So it's much smaller compared. But the interesting thing is like the gross, the GDP per a thousand inhabitants, Sweden is $55.8 million per thousand inhabitants. United States is 76.4 million per thousand inhabitants. So like with all things equal. They do pretty well for themselves over there, and it's a safe place to live, it's a nice country, and they figured out this whole recycling thing. So how do they do that, Shane? Do you got some more clips for us? Yeah, I've got another clip and how they do it is just making it convenient. I know that we've, you know, in our personal, in our neighborhoods, we've shown, you know, I have the SWACO, the designated area now for food waste. And then you've shown the new recycling bins that they're in the city. Yep. which helps, you know, convenience helps people where we love convenience, and especially in America, we love convenience. So, hence the, you know, how popular, you know, Grubhub and Uber Eats and all that is now. It's convenient to just sit on your couch and order food. But I'll share another quick video kind of the convenience and it highlights a little bit of their, how they do that. I'm so excited to see this. says this is an underground waste disposal system in Stockholm. And so to all of our listeners, you will wanna check out the video. We'll also try to find a way to post this video on Instagram, because it's not really audio, it's music. They invented a way to collect waste with compressed air. So it's like vacuum tubes. You throw your garbage in it. and you just put the right garbage in the right inlet. Yeah. and then shoots off to where it needs to go. You don't have to walk down the block. You don't have to collect it in a waste bin for a week and then set it out for a truck to pick up. Like you literally walk outside. And like, so part of that convenience. So they... So they're big on converting waste to energy, kind of how we've said earlier in the episode with some of that statistics there. So in a new urban development, in new urban developments, what the developers are doing is there's waste shoots that have been designated to channel trash straight into waste to energy incinerators. So basically what that means is the waste produced by the residents of a building is directly transformed into energy for their own home. which is another convenience thing because if let's give a United States for an example again, if people knew that, okay, I could walk outside, put my glass bottles in this just incinerator, and that's gonna help power my home. I'm gonna save money on electric, gas, whatever it is, you know, whatever is powering or electric. I mean, it's just another advantage, right? And it's, I think it's very clever and futuristic of what they're doing. Um, because I know in some of the, we had the episode a long time ago, the smart city, smart city one. And I think that was part of the idea with the smart city was for them to just take the waste and convert that, um, into energy directly. So to like power that's the cities. So that's kind of what, what that basically equals to. I mean, I think you hit it on the head when you said like, they just make it really easy, right? So it's really hard not to recycle. And I mean, for our carbon layer listeners, for my own education, like I'm a little jelly. Like I wish all the places that we live in United States were able, decided, invested in like systems like this, where I mean, why not? Yep. And so they literally have... To make it even more easier, countrywide, there's a recycling station within 300 meters for most residential areas. So that's just another convenience. or 300 kilometers. It says meters. It's like a thousand yards. Like a, no. 300, 900 feet. bad at it. Let's see, 300 meters to feet. It's like 900 feet or so, which is, so like a fifth of a mile. Yeah. So, I mean, not far, you know? And also, so Swedish citizens get discount vouchers as rewards for using the recycling machines. Yeah, I mean, yeah. recycling. Okay. I misunderstood. So you don't have to go, you have to go less than a quarter of a mile from your home to be near a recycling machine. Yep. And then the fact that you're going to get vouchers for using it is just winning. It's winning. So, you know, hopefully we of course aren't here to tell you everything about what Sweden's doing, but I've based off of the amazing race episode. I was like, man, we should really highlight that. And the more I dug into the research, it was just like one great idea after another of what they're doing to they're definitely winning the race, the amazing race to zero waste. That's for sure. They're winning the amazing race to zero waste. That's a tongue-twisting carbon-lay statement. I love it. Well, Shane, I'm definitely smarter after all this, and I've already queued up some Swedish punamic waste tube videos to watch after this, so I think I'm just gonna watch garbage away. And we'll share what we can, you know, on our Instagram. So, you know, keep an eye out. If you're listening to this episode, go to our Instagram page. We should have some things posted on there to kind of give you even more insight and visuals of how they do it. So. kick butt. Love it. How do we say goodbye in Swedish? Let's see that. I almost said the German version. Auf Wiedersehen. Odge... Odgeo? How Joe it is. Ajo. Well, ajo to everyone. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Till next time. listeners, correct our Swedish. Yeah. Yep, have a great.