Sweden imports waste to keep its energy plants running. The country converts waste into electricity and heat at facilities that incinerate it in a controlled manner, but it doesn’t produce enough of its own waste to supply them.
Less than 1% of Sweden’s household waste ends up in landfills. To make up the difference, it imports millions of tons of waste from other European countries and pays to receive it.
That way, waste that might otherwise end up buried elsewhere is turned into energy for hundreds of thousands of Swedish homes. Some of the heating in those homes depends on waste that crossed a border.