Here is a figure that might surprise you. In 2024, Sweden imported 3.86 million metric tonnes of waste from other countries, mainly the UK, Norway and Italy.

At the same time, less than 1% of municipal waste ends up in a landfill. Of the 6.6 million tonnes of waste incinerated in Sweden in 2024, about 2.5 million tonnes came from other European countries.

So Sweden buries almost none of its municipal rubbish, yet brings in millions of tonnes of waste from elsewhere. That sounds backwards until you see what it does with much of it.

How do you get paid to take someone’s trash?

It works through what’s called a gate fee. When a country like the UK has leftover waste it can’t easily recycle, it still has to do something with it. Shipping suitable waste to a country with spare capacity can be cheaper or more appealing than the alternatives. So exporters pay waste operators to accept and treat it. Sweden, having more incineration capacity than its domestic residual waste can fill, can be that destination.

A review from the North European Energy Perspectives Project notes that plants treating imported waste are paid to take it and that Sweden has built more incineration capacity than its domestic supply requires. More recent research likewise says Swedish incinerators charge gate fees and tend to run at full capacity. Sweden isn’t simply accepting a burden. Its plants are being paid to accept material they can use for energy recovery.

Where the rubbish actually goes

The waste is burned in plants that produce electricity and capture heat to warm homes. That heat travels through district heating, where hot water is piped from a central plant to buildings across a town. In 2022, one account counted 34 waste-to-energy plants, supplying heat to roughly 1,445,000 households and electricity to about 780,000.

District heating is a big reason the model suits Sweden. A cold country with pipes already in the ground can turn burnt rubbish into something households genuinely need.

The catch

Burning rubbish is not clean, and it isn’t the top of the waste hierarchy. The EU’s five-step hierarchy puts prevention first, followed by preparing for reuse, recycling, other recovery such as energy recovery, and disposal last. Burning for energy therefore sits below recycling, even if it can be preferable to landfill.

The worry critics raise is that plentiful fuel can discourage better options. Janek Vahk of Zero Waste Europe told one interviewer that “we believe that the current system for dealing with residuals, i.e. waste-to-energy incineration, is outdated and broken,” adding that “waste-to-energy prevents proper recycling and makes climate change worse.”

That’s a strong, contested claim from an advocate, not a settled verdict. Klas Svensson, a technical advisor at Avfall Sverige, makes the industry case that “energy recovery is the best available technology for treating and utilizing the energy in different residual wastes that can’t easily be recycled.” The real disagreement is whether burning beats realistic alternatives for residual material that cannot easily be recycled.

There is an emissions problem too. The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency says most emissions from waste incineration plants come from fossil-based plastics. Keeping waste out of landfill does not make burning it carbon-free.

Does Sweden even need the imports?

If imported trash were keeping the lights on, the arrangement would be a dependency. But it isn’t that simple. According to Avfall Sverige as recently as December 2025, waste-to-energy plants could use biofuel if there were not enough rubbish to burn. Imports also help fill incineration capacity that exceeds the supply of domestic residual waste.

Which tells you what’s really going on. Sweden has more burning capacity than its own residual waste can supply, so imported waste helps fill the gap while operators collect gate fees for treating it. That’s less a story about Sweden desperately needing foreign rubbish and more a story about a large, expensive waste-and-energy system operating in a European market.

My read is that the arrangement solves one problem neatly while sitting uneasily next to another. It keeps combustible waste out of landfills, produces useful heat and electricity, and creates revenue for plant operators. It also props up a system that ranks below recycling, burns fossil carbon, and needs a continuing stream of residual waste.

What I’d watch isn’t the 3.86 million tonnes alone. It’s the direction of travel. If Sweden’s recycling improves and waste imports keep rising anyway, that’s the tension made visible. If imports fall because exporting countries cut waste at the source or find better treatment options, that’s the hierarchy doing more of its job.