Lannanjalostamisesta kiertotalouteen

Katsaus Suomen jätehuollon pitkän ajan kehitykseen

Authors

• Henry Nygård

Abstract

The long history of Finnish solid waste management from night soil to recyclingUrbanization and population growth, industrialization, international trade and environmental degradation are linked to the societaldevelopment paths that led to the emergence of modern waste management. However, the main concern of society has always been to protect people from diseases. Health care interests dominated far into the 20th century, when both economic issues and physical problems caused by waste become priority concerns for municipal decision makers. This article discusses the long term development of waste management in Finland. The most significant change in waste management occurred in the 1920s when the traditional waste refiningstrategy (recycling of human waste) had to be replaced by a rubbish treatment strategy based on landfills. A second crossing point was the transition from the rubbish treatment strategy to a systematic destruction of waste, i.e. the application of a waste incineration strategy, which occurred after the Second World War. Still the idea of waste recycling or exploitation has never been completely rejected, but has the idea at different times affected the waste treatment solutions discussed. The implementation of EU legislation has from the 1990s onwards meant an adoption of European waste management practices in Finland. The co-incineration system implemented in Finland in the late 1980s, i.e. the energy recovery of waste in conventional power plants, had at the beginning of the 21st century to be abandoned and replaced by energy recovery in dedicated waste incineration plants. Currently Europe is moving towards a circular economy that the EU is going to direct with its directives. Circular economics covers the whole of natural resource policy from product design to production and consumption and it also includes new regulations and targets for waste management.