The CSR Newsletters are a freely-available resource generated as a dynamic complement to the textbook, Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Sustainable Value Creation.

To sign-up to receive the CSR Newsletters regularly during the fall and spring academic semesters, e-mail author David Chandler at david.chandler@ucdenver.edu.

Friday, September 4, 2015

Strategic CSR - Sweden

The article in the url below contains an interesting statistic from Scandinavia:
 
"Sweden now recycles or reuses an incredible 99 percent of its waste, an improvement on the already impressive 2012 figure of 96 percent."
 
How does it do it?
 
"The country uses a waste management hierarchy system that focuses in descending order on prevention, reuse, recycling, recycling alternatives, and as a last resort, disposal in landfill. While only one percent of the average annual 461 kilograms of waste that each Swede produces winds up at the landfill stage, it is the 'recycling alternatives' stage that is still causing controversy, as it involves the incineration of around two million tons of trash a year in the country's Waste-to-energy (WTE) program."
 
Partly, the WTE program is controversial because the Swedes are now importing excess waste from other European countries in order to burn it. The result, however, is impressive:
 
"950,000 Swedish households are heated by the energy produced by the system, and 260,000 households are powered by it."

In contrast:
 
"According to the EPA, in 2012 the U.S. only reclaimed 34.5 percent of its waste."

Have a good weekend
David
 
David Chandler & Bill Werther
 
Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: http://www.sagepub.com/chandler3e/
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Sweden Now Recycles a Staggering 99 Percent of its Garbage
By Beverley Mitchell
September 3, 2014
Inhabitat.com