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As other nations throughout the world struggle to cut the amount of waste piling up in their landfills and marring the landscape, Sweden is facing an entirely different sort of challenge -- they've run out of trash. Now they're forced to import some more.

Swedes, you see, are among the planet's least wasteful people, on average recycling around 96 percent of the garbage they produce. And with what's left, they've found a way to use, having implemented a world-class waste-to-energy incineration program capable of providing electricity sufficient to power hundreds of thousands of homes.

But their hyper-efficiency has led to a unique problem: a trash shortage that could threaten the energy production capacity.

So, what is Sweden to do? Well, according to Swedish officials, the notoriously tidy nation will begin importing garbage from their neighbor Norway -- about 80,000 tons of it annually, in fact, to fulfill their energy needs.

Perhaps the best part of all is that, in solving their problem, Swedes actually stand to profit from this endeavor; the Norwegians are going to pay them to take their waste, proving quite succinctly that one nation's trash can truly be another's treasure trove.

const tire work2Colin Jenkinson says he and his fellow crew members have become pretty adept at scavenging used tires for building walls on Earthships. For years, crews would scour shops or backyards looking for tires, and haul them to the Earthship community west of the Río Grande Gorge.

A pending agreement with Taos County could make getting used tires much easier, while at the same time saving taxpayers the cost of getting rid of them.

The county has proposed a contract under which the Solid Waste Department would take used tires from its collection sites and deliver them directly to the Earthship community. The goal is to reduce tipping fees at the regional landfill, and cut the time and cost of having to slit and bale tires.

“It’s ideal,” says architect Mike Reynolds, creator of the Earthship concept and founder of Earthship Biotecture.

CNN homepage: A Home made of beer cans. http://cnn.com/

Building a home one beer can at a time

From 1971 to 1977 the Environmental Protection Agency hired freelance photographers for a project called “Documerica.” The goal was to capture photographs relating to the environment, including everyday life.  More than 15,000 photos from the project now reside in the National Archives.

Monday, 28 November 2011 05:46

Old Plastic Bottles Bring Light

Written by

By Debra Atlas

Millions of people in the Philippines live in (relative) darkness. The cost of electricity is beyond the means of many, so residents of poorer communities resort to candles or kerosene lamps, which pose serious health and fire hazards.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The sprawling pile of hundreds of thousands of tires isn't easy to spot from the ground, sitting in a rural South Carolina clearing accessible by only a circuitous dirt path that winds through thick patches of trees. No one knows how all those tires got there, or when.

But, Calhoun County Council Chairman David Summers says of this giant rubber menace, "You can see it from space."

Authorities have charged one person in connection with the mess of roughly 250,000 tires, which covers more than 50 acres on satellite images. And now a Florida company is helping haul it all away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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