Human bridge has been forced to burn 40 tonnes of clothes, which would have been sorted in other EU countries. This after the county administrative board imposed a fine against the organization of approximately SEK 300,000.
The background is that shipments from Human bridge have been stopped at customs on three occasions during the spring and classified by the county administration as household waste because there were also shoes, belts or bags, or broken products in the load. To avoid a fine, the organization has now chosen to send all the contents of the stopped containers to incineration.
Increased need
The aid organization has a total of around 2,500 collection boxes for clothes in a large number of Swedish municipalities.
From the turn of next year, all municipalities must, according to the EU’s waste directive, have introduced separate collection of textiles, and the collected volume is therefore expected to increase sharply.
– For large-scale collection and disposal of used textiles to work in Sweden, it needs to be possible to export collected material for fine sorting within the EU, without today’s restrictions, says Lars Råsberg.
Waiting for clearer criteria
According to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, a new waste transport regulation has been decided in the EU. In two years, it will mean clearer criteria for assessing whether used products should be considered waste or not
Hear more about the problem in a report from May in the clip below.
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“We think it’s crazy that, for example, used shoes should be classified as household waste when there are people who are prepared to buy them,” says Lars Råsberg. Hear more in the clip. Photo: Zahraa Abdul Reda/SVT