
Sweden Runs Out of Garbage With Waste-to-Energy - samspenc
http://www.pachamama.org/blog/models-of-sustainability-sweden-runs-out-of-garbage
======
gvr
My dad's condo [edit: condo complex] in Sweden has 10+ different trash cans.
You divide your trash into individuals cans for batteries, bulbs, cardboard,
paper, compostables, and so forth.

I don't know but I assume that part of the reason that Swedes are able to deal
effectively with the trash is that they sort it properly at the source, so
that they more easily can process it.

When I read stuff like this it honestly makes me homesick. I've lived half my
life on the left side of the political spectrum (Sweden/France) and the other
half on the right side here in the US. I love it in SF, but this supposedly
"progressive" city has - especially considering how many smart people that
live here - an appallingly poor understanding of how to architect a civilized
society.

There is no reason this city shouldn't be clean, essentially free of homeless
(and sometimes insane) people, have great public roads, excellent public
transportation, low crime, worry about more interesting things than what size
diamond ring Kanye bought for his lady, and so forth.

There is a good data driven TED talk on how points like the above correlate
with wealth and equality:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html](http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html)

~~~
3pt14159
It's inefficient to do 10+ cans per person. It is more efficient to sort it at
the garbage transfer station the way Canadians do. Most places have 3 cans.
General, glass/plastic/cardboard, and biodegradable.

Also, SF is considered "progressive" for many of its completely unsustainable
policies, like housing controls, which ultimately lead to further economic
inefficiency. A truly progressive society is more like Toronto where the poor
can generally get help, but we don't mind putting up condos or new office
space.

Also the Swedes do some things that are much more right wing than America,
like Free Schools (essentially private schools operating with a government
payment, similar to the coupon model). It isn't a left-right difference.
Furthermore, Sweden has cut services and taxes more than any other western
country in the past decade.

Also you can't really compare it anyway. There is a far higher amount of
cultural homogeneity in Sweden than the US, even in the white portion of the
US, and the average IQ is 3 or 4 points higher.

As for homelessness, you are living in SF. This is what you get. The US has a
much higher veteran rate than Sweden which highly correlates to homelessness
(usually due to PTSD and associated drug abuse) and the capital of
homelessness in North America is SF.

~~~
philsnow
> It's inefficient to do 10+ cans per person.

I think he means that there are 10 cans for the entire condo complex.

Also, forcing individual _taxpayers_ to sort trash really keeps
environmentalism in the forefront of voters' minds, which I imagine makes it
much easier to keep environment-friendly legislation and public works projects
going.

Consider the opposite extreme, having a single bin that absolutely everything
goes in. It would be easy to just completely forget about whatever it is
you're throwing away and never think about what ultimate fate each piece is
destined for.

~~~
mhb
It's counterintuive to me that forcing people to sort their trash will lead to
a fondness for recycling. Did the draft engender a fondness for the Vietnam
war?

A different approach would be to charge people for trash pickup. If the cost
for sorted trash removal is enough of a savings, then people will do it.

~~~
willvarfar
(Living in Sweden)

Actually, the Swedes really do believe in this. Everyone I know
conscientiously sorts their trash.

A Swede will happy carry their own bags up to their rooms in hotels, too. Most
hotels don't have porters. They don't have the whole tipping thing either
generally. You go through life doing things for yourself, not paying others to
do things for you.

Maybe its the US psyche and is some kind of superiority complex? I'm half-
serious; why do people on your side of the pond think its a hassle to sort
their trash?

~~~
gvr
I think you're dead on with the "boo-hoo god forbid I'd have to sort my trash,
raise my own kid, pack my grocery bag, carry my luggage mentality."

Whenever I'm offered these services I feel annoyed - what do I look like, a
giant baby? I can carry my own bag.

The larger the wealth gap is in society, the more people become obsessed with
comparing themselves to others and the more patterns we see designed to enable
them to feel they come out on top in this comparison.

~~~
mattm
I've never understood porters in hotels. You've just transported your bags for
possibly thousands of miles and many hours but they are going to take them the
last few meters to your room by elevator on a cart and then they expect a tip
for it.

~~~
jacalata
In the civilised days when they began, I assume you had just been chauffeured
to the hotel and the chauffeur has handed your bags off to the porter.

~~~
sgdnogb2n
Maybe you'd still be wheezing from all of the road dust you'd been inhaling in
the carriage the entire ride.

------
memnips
For a different perspective I found this older article which ponders the
economic impact of forcing 9 million people to spend time and energy sorting
their trash: [http://mises.org/daily/2855](http://mises.org/daily/2855)

~~~
read_again
Thank you!

I really think the fact that Sweden is 30 time smaller than the US is a
significant aspect of the problem, which ought to be highlighted a bit more
when doing a comparison between these two countries on their energy models.

How hard would it be for the US to implement such solution (assuming the cost
would not be as prohibitive as it is compared with nuclear energy), first in a
large city like NY (or LA) as a test bed? Maybe something like that already
exist in the States?

~~~
xxpor
Go look up Harrisburg and how their trash->energy plant as worked out.

~~~
gaadd33
Yeah because a mismanaged city project in a dysfunctional city is a great
example of the actual technology, especially when you hire totally unqualified
companies to do it. But hey, we could have spent all that money on a Wild West
Museum instead or maybe just prayed some more for a balanced budget.

~~~
xxpor
Yeah, that comment was a little snarkier than I had intended it to be. My
point was more that it had been tried in the US, but in this one case it
failed, mostly because of complete incompetence. Not that the tech was bad.

------
abalone
The dirty secret here is CO2 emissions. Everything Sweden does to cut down
waste to begin with is awesome. But of course you're going to run out of trash
if you BURN EVERYTHING LEFT.

What marks this as a puff piece is the lack of honesty around CO2. The only
place they mention it is in comparing it to.. generating the same amount of
power from burning oil. It is spun as a way to reduce CO2, because look at all
the oil we aren't burning. But this is a disingenuous comparison.

A proper comparison would pit burning trash against renewable energy sources
that don't produce greenhouse gases. Nowhere do they even let on that
incinerating trash is anything but a total positive for the environment.

There are other signals that this is a PR piece. They note that they've
reduced "emissions" by 90-99 percent. Sounds like a miracle. But if you look
closely and read all the details.. they don't count CO2 as an "emission".

Source (that the article is based on):
[http://www.avfallsverige.se/fileadmin/uploads/forbranning_en...](http://www.avfallsverige.se/fileadmin/uploads/forbranning_eng.pdf)

~~~
batiste
"A proper comparison would pit burning trash against renewable energy sources
that don't produce greenhouse gases"

Not really, because carbon neutral renewable energy usable for heating are not
plentiful. AFAIK there is only: Sustainable wood pelet burning with particles
filters, Heat pumps.

And there is contestations about heat pumps being a green energy source
[http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/sep/08/heat-
pump...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/sep/08/heat-pumps-green-
heating)

~~~
abalone
Not plentiful? Iceland does most of their district heating with geothermal.
Their total energy production is over 80% renewables.

Of course it's a proper comparison. Even if heat pumps have drawbacks, so does
burning trash. You compare the two.

------
alipang
Better article: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/world/europe/oslo-copes-
wi...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/30/world/europe/oslo-copes-with-
shortage-of-garbage-it-turns-into-energy.html?_r=0)

~~~
petercooper
This is a naïve but genuine question.. is shipping trash from the UK to Norway
and then setting it on fire better for the environment than burying it? (Or,
at the very least, is it better to burn trash than to extract and burn
something else?)

~~~
alex_doom
Oh they burn it? I though they were doing that bacteria to methane idea?

~~~
petercooper
I don't know about the Swedish one but the Norwegian one in the other linked
article says:

 _Oslo, a recycling-friendly place where roughly half the city and most of its
schools are heated by burning garbage — household trash, industrial waste,
even toxic and dangerous waste from hospitals and drug arrests — has a
problem: it has literally run out of garbage to burn._

So it seems so, yeah :-(

~~~
dmentat
I live in a Swedish city, and I recently visited the local "garbage burning"
power plant. It's not like the trash is just burned and the fumes released
into the atmosphere, they pass through like 10-15 different types of filters
removing and recycling different particles. The fumes that finally are
released supposedly have a very negligible environmental impact. I'd link you
some sources, but I got this information first-hand from the plant engineers,
not sure where to look.

~~~
fetbaffe
Yes, emission from dioxin has been reduced by 99% since the 1980s beacuse of
better filtering and much higher temperatures when burning the garbage.

From Naturvårdsverket (Swedish Environmental Protection Agency)

In Swedish [http://www.naturvardsverket.se/Stod-i-
miljoarbetet/Vaglednin...](http://www.naturvardsverket.se/Stod-i-
miljoarbetet/Vagledning-amnesvis/Forbranning/Avfallsforbranning/Utslapp-fran-
avfallsforbranning/)

Google translate
[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.naturvardsverket.se%2FStod-
i-miljoarbetet%2FVagledning-
amnesvis%2FForbranning%2FAvfallsforbranning%2FUtslapp-fran-
avfallsforbranning%2F)

~~~
sbierwagen

      much higher temperatures
    

How's the nitrogen oxide levels, then?

~~~
fetbaffe
There exist a NOx tax (since 1992) for polluting the air with nitrogen oxides
when burning garbage. But how much a furnace pollutes when doing that, not
sure at all.

The amount of polluted nitrogen oxides to the level of produced energy unit
has dropped some the last few years, but not much.

The general nitrogen oxide levels in Sweden has been reduced since the 90s
according to this source

In Swedish [http://www.miljomal.se/Miljomalen/Alla-
indikatorer/Indikator...](http://www.miljomal.se/Miljomalen/Alla-
indikatorer/Indikatorsida/?iid=91&pl=1)

"Från 1990 till 2011 har utsläppen minskat från cirka 270 000 ton till cirka
145 500 ton. Det är en minskning på 46 procent."

"From 1990 to 2011, emissions have been reduced from about 270 000 tonnes to
around 145 500 tonnes. This is a decrease of 46 percent."

Google translate
[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.miljomal.se%2FMiljomalen%2FAlla-
indikatorer%2FIndikatorsida%2F%3Fiid%3D91%26pl%3D1)

The source is from Miljömål (Environment Goal),site runned by Swedish
Environmental Protection Agency

------
codex
Do they sequester the massive amounts of CO2 that trash burning generates? If
not, sinking that carbon into the ground may be a better idea. Or not:
landfills produce methane and other natural gases which are more potent than
carbon dioxide if they're not captured and reused. Has anyone done the math?

~~~
dredmorbius
Most of a typical waste stream consists of current/recent biomass -- a
surprising amount by both volume and weight is paper and paper products.

Plastics and such do represent fossilized carbon (usually) but are a smaller
percentage overall.

So the net carbon impact is much lower than burning fossil fuels. And yes, the
methane reduction helps, though methane does have a pretty short (about a
decade) residency in the atmosphere as I understand.

------
aetherson
These articles about "running out of garbage" make it sound like a great
thing, but it seems to me that it's a big disadvantage of any kind of waste-
to-energy scheme. I mean, the concept is that you spend a ton of money making
these power generation facilities that do waste-to-energy, and then that cost
is partially defrayed by selling the energy.

But if you don't actually have enough garbage to run the facility, then it is
that much less cost-efficient. It implies that something has gone badly wrong.
Why did you build so many facilities?

~~~
return0
I wonder if they even cost much, after all a furnace is not some terribly new
technology. In Copenhagen they seem to have excess money to turn it into a
giant smoking ski slope: [http://www.archdaily.com/339893/bigs-waste-to-
energy-plant-b...](http://www.archdaily.com/339893/bigs-waste-to-energy-plant-
breaks-ground-breaks-schemas/)

~~~
aetherson
A brief web search didn't come up with any cost estimates of the Swedish
facilities, but this page lists the cost of a singaporean one at about $500
million.

[http://www.keppelseghers.com/en/content.aspx?sid=3028](http://www.keppelseghers.com/en/content.aspx?sid=3028)

It's possible that that's drastically different than the Swedish ones, but I
fundamentally do not believe that any power generation facility is a terribly
cheap facility to build or maintain. If you do, I suggest that that is an
extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.

~~~
nixy
One of the newest waste burning plants in Sweden, Block 5[1], cost $150mm (SEK
1bn) to construct in 2005-2006.

[1]
[http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uppsala_Block_5](http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uppsala_Block_5)

------
qwertzlcoatl
I am so overflowing and stuffed from all these NSA revelations, that I read
"Snowden Runs Out Of Garbage" two times in a row.

------
saltvedt
My home municipality on the west coast of Norway sends their waste to Sweden
to be burned. Before we did that, all households had to sort the waste into
separate bins for plastic and organic waste. The organic waste were turned
into compost locally. It changed because Miljøverndepartementet (Ministry of
Environmental Protection) changed the regulations for depositing plastic
waste. So many municipalities have trucks going "over the mountain" with waste
to Sweden to be burned. And we actually have the ability to burn waste for
energy here on the west coast of Norway, but I guess simply sending it to
Sweden is cheaper. And it actually isn't quite as bad as it sounds like
because many trucks also deliver manufactured goods from Sweden and would have
return empty.

I have no idea what the net environmental benefit is (or if it even is
positive (or if anyone really knows)).

------
jchrisa
they have a big PDF that shows they've been able to cut emissions of almost
all the bad stuff except NOx, a precursor to acid rain:
[http://www.avfallsverige.se/fileadmin/uploads/forbranning_en...](http://www.avfallsverige.se/fileadmin/uploads/forbranning_eng.pdf)

------
msvan
Reminds me of the Daily Show's incisive documentary about Sweden.
[http://www.videogum.com/65751/the_daily_show_visits_robyns_b...](http://www.videogum.com/65751/the_daily_show_visits_robyns_b/tv/late-
night/)

------
tlongren
Ames, Iowa, home of Iowa State University, does something similar. All of
their trash gets burned to generate electricity for the city. Seems to work
quite well for them, been doing it for probably 30 or 40 years, now.

~~~
rquantz
How do they produce safe emissions from trash? They have a hard enough time
when burning something where they control the input.

~~~
wf
I don't think they do; however, it seems to be possible.[1] Googling "batch
oxidation" gives back this PDF[2] describing it. Answering your question
again:

"Unlike incinerators and other thermal processes, the BOS™ does not use a high
temperature, turbulent processes to reduce the waste. The “quiet”,
non‐turbulent smouldering of waste during the gasification phase means that
the production of fly‐ash is almost eliminated, and the process does not
suffer from temperature peaks and troughs, thus reducing problems with the
formation of NOx and dioxins. However, many waste materials contain chemical
components which can cause problems in any thermal process. Acid gases and
metals must be neutralised and or / removed, and dioxins, furans, and
particulates must all be reduced to minute amounts in order to meet the
stringent EU legislation and compliance requirements. BOS™ achieves this by
the use of a comprehensive Flue Gas Treatment (FGT) system through a dedicated
Best Available Technology (BAT) program. The injection of sodium bicarbonate
and activated carbon in a powdered form neutralises the acid gases and absorbs
heavy metals and dioxins. Urea, injected into the Secondary Combustion
Chamber, reduces NOx levels dramatically, and a bag-house filter system
removes any last traces of particulate before the exhaust goes to atmosphere."

[1][http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/business/energy-
environmen...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/business/energy-
environment/trash-burning-with-a-clean-energy-twist.html?pagewanted=all)

[2][http://wtecanada.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/WtEC-BOS-
Web...](http://wtecanada.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/WtEC-BOS-Web-
brochure-1.pdf)

~~~
Swannie
Phrases like "... a dedicated Best Available Technology (BAT) program." give
me cause for concern.

It amounts to "we're not provably worse than any of the other technologies
that have been adopted"... aka it's far from the best available, which I'm
sure is cost prohibitive.

That aside, I do have a lot of respect for the work that goes into this sort
of chemical engineering - absolutely fascinating stuff.

------
perssontm
Interesting the me as a Swede, I read about this "problem" at HN first. Never
read/heard anything about this in mainstream swedish media. I might if course
have missed it, but if its such a big problem as the article like to state, I
like to think I should have heard of it, otherwise it would be fair to
question the sources of this.

------
phy07
The article mentions incinerators; I wonder how it is impacting air quality,
specifically dioxin levels.

I recently saw this documentary which discusses various approaches to managing
trash:
[http://www.trashedfilm.com/references.php#tabair](http://www.trashedfilm.com/references.php#tabair)

------
austinrory
That's certainly better than setting it all out to float in the ocean as new
garbage islands.

------
INTPenis
All our green buses here in the south of Sweden (Scania/Skåne) run on
biological waste. There are big campaigns for getting more food and having
people separate food and biological waste in their trash.

------
stretchwithme
In the third world, the poor comb through garbage dumps seeking anything that
might have value.

Obviously, I'd like to see that end. There are many more productive things
humans can do that are far less of a risk to their health.

But imagine robots that are able to do it, either at the source or before the
garbage is burned or buried or shipped off elsewhere.

A lot of work still remains before that happens, but one day robots will be
carefully examining each item discarded and sending it to the most appropriate
place.

~~~
briandear
Of course, when those poor people can afford robots to scavenge in the trash,
they won't need to scavenge in the trash. As far as more productive things,
when you don't have anything to eat and nothing of value, there's nothing more
productive than trying to find something of value. Also, scavenging trash
dumps is probably the least of their health concerns. Let's solve clean water
before we start worrying about trash sorting in Somalia.

------
EGreg
Are there any negative externalities turning garbage into energy? What are the
byproducts? Pollution released into the air? Spread to everyone else?

Because this is wonderful!

~~~
pyoung
Sounds like they do a pretty good job of controlling the emissions. My primary
concern, and this is a fairly uneducated concern, but I always envisioned a
(bleak) future where we had already mined all the precious and rare-earth
metals and minerals and were forced to use our garbage dumps to re-claim those
materials. Of course a good recycling program, would in theory, prevent this
from ever being necessary, but in general, burning stuff to create energy
feels sooo 20th century, we should really be using renewables and nuclear.

~~~
EGreg
Well my primary concern was the garbage and pollution, such as the Great
Pacific Garbage Patch. If we really found a way to cut our garbage down to 4%,
that's pretty incredible ... of course if we start generating 25x more garbage
to begin with then it will negate that.

------
dredmorbius
This story illustrates both the upsides and limitations of trash-to-energy
programs.

On the positive side: many sources will _pay_ you to take their trash from
them. There's nothing like free energy.

On the negative side:

\- Sweden's exhaustion of its own sources of trash show that the concept is
inherently limited, even in an abundant consumption economy. That is, one
which is producing ample waste streams. As the article notes: "the fastidious
population of Northern Europe produces only about 150 million tons of waste a
year, he said, far too little to supply incinerating plants that can handle
more than 700 million tons." That's a kind way of saying that Sweden's
overbuilt its trash-to-electric capacity by 467%.

\- Some trash is more equal than others. Countries such as Switzerland and
Germany which offer highly segregated waste streams find themselves with many
takers. Italy, who is stereotypically ... less organized, not so much. Again,
noted in the article.

\- There are issues with contaminants, which require monitoring of the input
waste stream, the combustion process, and emissions controls.

\- Ultimately there's the question of how much trash will exist in a world
with a leaner energy profile. In which case it's likely we'll find that
there's a very high excess of trash-to-energy infrastructure, though much of
it might be applied to other feedstocks, including biomass. Though this also
has its limits:

[http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange...](http://globalecology.stanford.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf)

Putting this in an American context (likely familiar to most readers):

Americans produce 230 million tons of waste stream, about 4.3 - 4.6 pounds per
person per day.

[http://www.learner.org/interactives/garbage/solidwaste.html](http://www.learner.org/interactives/garbage/solidwaste.html)

[http://www.epa.gov/osw/basic-solid.htm](http://www.epa.gov/osw/basic-
solid.htm)

In a best-case scenario, this would be pure biomass. I'll assume the same
energy potential as carbohydrate (oil-based products will have roughly double
this, glass, metal, and inorganic solids less), at 4 calories/gram, or roughly
971 GWh of electrical energy. That's an appreciable amount of energy, but
given that annual electrical production is 4.1 tera watt-hours, my
hypothetical puts waste-stream energy production at less than 1/4 of
electrical energy usage, or roughly 6% of total energy usage. And that's
before considering the energy requirements of collecting and processing the
wastestream itself, or the effects on waste production in a reduced-energy
environment.

~~~
tanzam75
I think you're off by a factor of 1000. I get 980 _terawatt_ -hours of energy.

If, as you say, 971 GWh is equivalent to 6% of total energy usage, then 980
TWh is 6000% total energy usage. Of course, you don't get 100% efficiency in
incineration, but an oversupply of 60x leaves a lot of room for inefficiency.

Here's my calculation. I've used scientific notation to reduce the possibility
of order-of-magnitude errors:

> 230 million tons Avoirdupois = 2.3e8 tons

> 2.3e8 tons * 2e3 pounds/ton = 4.6e11 pounds

> 4.6e11 pounds * 0.45 kg/pound = 2.07e11 kg

> 2.07e11 kg * 1000 g/kg = 2.07e14 g

> 2.07e14 g * 17 kJ/g for carbohydrates = 3.52e15 kJ

> 3.52e15 kJ * 2.78e-4 kWh/kJ = 9.8e11 kWh

That's 980 billion kWh, or 980 million MWh, or 980 thousand GWh, or 980 TWh.

I wonder if maybe you're getting nutrition Calories (uppercase) confused with
gram calories (lowercase). Nutrition Calories are actually kilocalories!!! If
you forgot to multiply by 1000 to account for this, then that would explain
your result.

In Europe, nutrition labels are listed in kilojoules. This eliminates the
confusion over calories.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'll double-check my math, but suspect my numbers are closer to the truth.

Keep in mind that you're also limited by heat-engine efficiencies. I need to
double-check if steam turbines are governed by Carnot cycle (35% max
efficiency) or others, but that's another factor to keep in mind.

And yes, the calorie/kilocalorie distinction is important ;-)

~~~
tanzam75
If you've got 6000% the required energy, then 35% efficiency is not of major
concern.

Three orders of magnitude makes a world of difference.

~~~
dredmorbius
It does.

And I'm confirming your numbers, FWIW, which makes me suspect there's
something wrong with my assumptions. I'll see if I can't dig up other
references on waste-to-energy estimates.

------
bonchibuji
A few months back, I wrote a newspaper article about this as well as Mexico
City's waste management schemes.

[http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/ikea-burritos-
and-...](http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/ikea-burritos-and-some-
trash/article4130794.ece)

------
polskibus
burning trash for energy is not really efficient. It's better than leaving it
on a landfill but it is not the same as recycling. A one-off reuse is still
far from perfect situation where most material can be reused (with let's say
10% loss of material in each cycle). Congratulations to Sweden for being
better than everyone else but there's still room for improvement!

------
batiste
How is that economically/environmentally sound to import garbage? Garbage
should be burned locally to avoid extra pollution.

~~~
freehunter
Not in _my_ backyard!

Seriously, that's why it's shipped rather than burned locally. Some people
don't want these plants around them no matter what the benefit.

~~~
altcognito
For example: Detroit

[http://www.epa.gov/region07/air/title5/petitiondb/petitions/...](http://www.epa.gov/region07/air/title5/petitiondb/petitions/detroit_renewable_petition2011.pdf)

------
gboone42
There's a reason the waste-to-energy plant was always my favorite in Sim City.
I too ran out of trash a few times.

------
rkrkrk21
Dear India - Are you listening ?

~~~
31reasons
Nope. India is practicing Gandhi's 3 monkey principle when it comes to
garbage.

------
dschiptsov
There is Finland with millions Russian tourists - endless source.))

------
dfrey
Can't they just go to Ikea to get more?

------
return0
Haha look at those socialists, they ran out of energy.

~~~
return0
I thought i didn't have to hold my sarcasm card here.

------
ballard
NYC. Problem solved.

    
    
      0. NYC, like many big cities, creates a ton of trash (excluding writers and actors).
    
      1. I didn't see anything about CO2/CO/COx emissions.  Landfills are semi-sequestration.  Burning is definitely not sequestration.  It doesn't seem scalable.  See also: http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_green_why_we_should_build_wooden_skyscrapers.html

