Belgium will host Europe’s biggest sportainment park
The facility will be located in Hasselt and is set to welcome its first visitors this spring
Still the country remains global leader in recycling, having nearly reached ‘zero waste’ levels
It may come as a surprise that Sweden, the world recycling champion with nearly achieved ‘zero waste’ levels, hardly recycles any plastic from scrapped cars.
But this is exactly what Radio Sweden has found. This setback can be attributed to the difficulty in finding buyers for the plastic components. Mattias Bergman, CEO of the car industry's trade organisation Car Sweden, recently told the radio that the process is simply not profitable as there is no market for plastics from disused cars.
Instead, the plastic is sold along with other combustible material to be burnt up at incineration plants. That's seen as more profitable but it also has an environmental impact despite innovations in the process.
Under Sweden’s waste-to-energy programme, burning waste supplies heat to more than one million homes in the country. The smoke from waste burnt at incineration plants is filtered through dry filters and water. The remaining ashes are sifted through to extract metals that are recycled again, and the residue is used in road construction. In the end, just one percent of the ‘fuel’ is left and then it is disposed off in dumps.
But since half of all household waste in Sweden is burnt to produce energy, the process cannot be considered entirely friendly to the environment.
There may be a viable alternative to burning plastic from scrapped cars for heating, however. The Belgian car recycling organisation Febelauto, contacted by Radio Sweden, said that 60 percent of plastic in scrapped cars in Belgium is reused to make new products.
Sweden has no match when it comes to recycling. Thanks to advanced collection techniques and the involvement of its environmentally sensitive population, the country recycles 99 percent of all locally-produced waste, with the remaining one percent going to landfills. But with ‘zero waste’ levels almost reached Sweden now has to import rubbish from other European countries.
Citing concerns about humaneness, the legislation aims to discourage the proliferation of the so-called designer pet breeds
Naturally, many aren’t happy - not because of the reduced possibility for prayers, but because they felt it was an attack on welfare
The facility will be located in Hasselt and is set to welcome its first visitors this spring
Some autonomous shuttles in France are now doing their rounds without a human supervisor inside
Europe is striving to cut the costs of operating wind turbines on water
38,000 of these fellas help to purify the city air, so why not become friends with them?
2020 and 2021 were zero years for these types of events, but the break has not diminished its reputation
As Europe strives to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050, Turku and Dijon are among a group of cities seeking to reach this goal two decades earlier
Some autonomous shuttles in France are now doing their rounds without a human supervisor inside
2020 and 2021 were zero years for these types of events, but the break has not diminished its reputation
Citing concerns about humaneness, the legislation aims to discourage the proliferation of the so-called designer pet breeds
The facility will be located in Hasselt and is set to welcome its first visitors this spring
The European Commission has published its first progress report charting the achievements of the socio-cultural movement that combines beauty, inclusion and sustainability
The 2023 edition of the creative initiative promises to be bigger, bolder and more inclusive
This initiative seeks to integrate the values of the New European Bauhaus into the European Commission’s 100 Cities Mission
Veni Markovski’s take on dealing with disinformation in the European Union's poorest country – Bulgaria
A conversation with the mayor of Utrecht on the occasion of her mission to COP27
A conversation with the President of the European Committee of the Regions, about energy, climate change and the underrated importance of cohesion policy