Swedish Waste Management
Swedish Waste Management, or Avfall Sverige, is a public association that runs waste management and recycling in Sweden. It was founded in 1947 and is based in Malmö, with a main office in Stockholm. Its goal is zero waste.
Tony Clark has been the managing director since 2019. Avfall Sverige is a member of Municipal Waste Europe, a group of public waste bodies in Europe. In 2022, it started a partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to help with climate action and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
Sweden is known for its efficient waste system. In 2020, about 152 million tonnes of waste were produced in total (mostly from mining), with less than 1% being hazardous. Only about 0.7% of all household and industrial waste is disposed of, while the rest is recycled. Sweden also imports around 2 million tonnes of waste from neighboring countries to support recycling.
Economic impact: recycling generated about €1.7 billion in 2020 (the highest was €1.98 billion in 2016).
History and progress: recycling rose from 38% of waste in 1975 to more than 99% by 2018. To keep recycling plants busy, Sweden has imported waste since 2010, mainly from Great Britain and Norway. By 2015, about 950,000 homes were heated and 260,000 homes received electricity from waste.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 22:51 (CET).