Day 1218: What a load of rubbish!

An extremely popular and well shared news article that I've seen floating around is the one about Sweden importing rubbish from other countries because it is "running out" of waste. Cue massive praises to the recycling gods of the world. It's not quite all that simple, though.


In truth Sweden is not "running out" but rather seeking more fuel because it can. Unlike in Britain where most people have their own household boiler, Scandinavian houses are almost always heated via a heat network (fjärrvärme.) The remotely heated water is pumped to homes from a huge central plant, meaning that energy efficiency is higher while cost and environmental impact are considerably lower that if each house had its own heating system. Town planners can do other clever things with remotely heated water, like run it under pedestrianised areas so that snow and ice can't form on the pavement.

The number of energy plants that can turn waste into heated water for homes is ever increasing. Privately run plants receive money for using waste that is legally not allowed to go to landfill and then receive further money for selling their hot water to homes. Almost half of all waste in Sweden is sent to be burned at these energy plants. Consequently only around 1% of household waste is sent to a tip, and that's why all the junk news outlets got their knickers in a twist on slow news day.

Then the junk news outlets point out how great Sweden is at recycling. OK yes it's true, Sweden is pretty kick ass at recycling. People working together recycle a third of the stuff they throw away and the recycling culture is strong, every building has good recycling facilities and every person knows the rules. A combination of excellent public information, education and provision means that recycling is the norm, unlike in Britain where each council has its own set of rules about recycling, everyone has a different way to recycle and people are just generally confused about what they can recycle.

What happens when you say that Sweden is importing other country's waste and then point out that Sweden is very good at recycling is that people start to say "ah yes, Sweden is very environmental and is saving all these dastardly other countries from piles and piles of trash." Well, no. What Sweden is actually doing is BURNING GARBAGE and therefore dumping a load more CO2 per KwH produced into the air than it would from burning coal or gas. Paradoxically, Sweden transports household waste from Norway in trucks (that produce CO2) burn the waste in Sweden (which produces CO2) and then send the toxic ashes back to Norway (in trucks ...that produce CO2) for storage in a finitely available lime cave.

Waste burning is seen as a good long term solution to solve the problem of unsightly, toxic landfill sites but environmentalists point out that it should only be a short term solution when it comes to CO2 emissions and the release of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals from burning plastics. Some plastics which are currently not recyclable are burned, but these could be stored until a process is developed for recycling them. Furthermore there is only so much space for the ashes produced by burning the waste and, worse still, some Norwegians argue that making fuel from waste so profitable discourages proper recycling and causes Norwegian households to throw away things they would otherwise not.

There you have it then, a bit more complicated than it seemed before. On the one hand a very efficient and praiseworthy system for delivering heated water to homes and reducing landfill, and on the other a very high CO2 impact, chemical emissions  and a short-sighted solution to a delicate problem. And while I did say that recycling is so much better in Sweden than it is in Britain, it's not all doom and gloom. There is in fact one area of waste management in which Britain does better than Sweden and that's composting. One day maybe we'll all put our heads together and come up with a comprehensive waste management system that shares the universal benefits and eliminates the bad bits. We can dream, eh!

Day 1204: Rolling back

It's been over a hundred days since I last wrote a blog post. I had given it up as a lost cause, but then some strange things happened.

First, people started asking me when I was going to update my blog. And I'm not talking close friends and family who are contractually obliged to care (they don't care about the blog as it happens, so maybe they are the ones I'm contractually obliged to forgive...) I mean really random unrelated friends and collegues.

Second I signed up for the world record breaking Reddit secret Santa gift exchange between 15,000 people. It asks you to list your hobbies and give any websites about you (your reddit profile, an amazon wish list, a personal web site) to help inspire your potential Santa. I gave my blog for reference but it felt a bit pointless since it was neglected.

Third and BEST OF ALL my blog actually contributed to my EARNING MONEY! Well, mostly my old China plate (yeah I use cockney rhyming slang now) Helen Jones got me the deal since she's got some fingers in some communication pies (mmm communication pies) but the man who gave me the commission said something along the lines of "yeah I read it" when I told him I had a blog so....it's something!

I was asked to write a 15,000 word document about all aspects of life in Uppsala to help anyone moving there. Unfortunately it's not my intellectual property any more (BECAUSE I SOLD IT MOTHERFUCKERS FUCK YEAH)  so I can't give you a slice (mmm communication pies). Needless to say I managed to get the Flogsta scream nestled somewhere in there.

HUR SOM HELST (ANYWAY)

All of that was just a preamble to say I am motivated as HELL to complain at y'all about the FUCKING GODDAMN ESCALATORS IN STOCKHOLM (and to a lesser extent IN UPPSALA *SHAKES FIST*)

Yes! I'm back! I'm complaining about escalators!

I am simply in disbelief about how many escalators don't work. Here's a statistic I just totally made up on the spot: at any given time in Stockholm 1/3 of all escalators are not working. "It's totally made up" you scoff "that's a ridiculous number of escalators, if you're going to make up a figure at least make it believable!" But you're wrong! It IS BELIEVABLE and almost TRUE! I use the metro a lot. A lot. At least 4 times a day, every day. Even on weekends when I get land legs from being still too long from not being on an escalator and just go out for a few hours and ride on the escalators around town. I don't ride them around town, that's not possible although it would be awesome. Wait, no it wouldn't because they'd all BE FUCKING BROKEN.

Stupid comments aside, there are far too many escalators not escalating. Here are the top 5 reasons why they are not doing what they are supposed to be doing according to their name:

1. NO REASON
Nope, no reason. They're just not moving. There's usually a totally unhelpful orange sticker that says "REPORTED". Sometimes I wonder if someone came and repaired the escalator in the 12 hour period in which I was not using it, and then one minute before I came back again it broke again so they had to stick a new sticker. Good business for the sticker people.

2. THERE'S A GUY IN IT
A lot of escalators can't run because there are people inside them changing bits and fixing bits. But I have definitely, more than once, seen a broken escalator that had people inside it "fixing it" just a week before. Sometimes I ride on a new looking escalator and instead of thinking nothing which is normal on an escalator ride, I am instead asking myself how long it will be before this new escalator is broken. I tell myself it will not be long. And I am right, go me.

3. THERE'S A WOMAN IN IT
Because she fell in and got horrific leg injuries and then all of Stockholm had a massive health and safety orgasm and decided to do a complete audit of the escalators IN THE WHOLE OF THE CITY and completely change out 32 of them. Normally I would be happy about them "fixing" the escalators but see #2 above. Also, the fixing of the DEATH TRAP ESCALATORS is also in addition to all the other problems I am mentioning, so now my statistic is looking kinda reasonable, huh.

4. NO REASON
I can't stress this one enough. This is NOT A VALID EXCUSE. I come from a city with ten times the number of people using the metro escalators, with MILLIONS of journeys every day. Not once in all my many years as a Londoner have I ever been so fucked off with the shitty shitty broken escalators that I wanted to rant for all the world to read about it. In fact, Stockholm you are SO SHIT AT ESCALATORS I think you should just LOOK AT THIS FUCKING HUNDRED YEAR OLD WOODEN ESCALATOR IN GREENFORD THAT IS STILL FUCKING WORKING AND LEARN SOME LESSONS.

FUCKING LOOK AT IT!

picture is from Ewan Munroe

5. NÖDSTOPP
Because there are trolls everywhere and not just on the internet, some people think that there are not enough escalators already out of service that they need to PRESS THE EMERGENCY STOP BUTTON FOR NO REASON. You know this has happened because there is a big flashing sign above the escalator that says NÖDSTOPP. Again, after a lifetime of living in London (millions of journeys, millions of fucktard trolls there too) I have never encountered an escalator that was out of use for several hours because someone pressed the emergency stop. That's probably because the sign that says Emergency Stop is about that big, under another sign that says PENALTY FOR IMPROPER USE in that size font. Also, it's a small button in the centre of a framed module placed in the centre of a large gap between escalators, so pressing it is a bit like a fairground attraction designed to make you lose money. Meanwhile the Stockholm emergency stop is a huge, round, shiny, emergency button that is, frankly, tempting.

I stand by my 1/3 of escalators statement (and I'll continue standing there because the travellator is out of service.) If an escalator is not escalating then what is it? And if an escalator falls in a Swedish wood and there's nobody around to see it, is it out of service? The answer is yes.