Confiscated alcohol fuels Swedish biofuel

Police in Scotland, with booze confiscated there, prepare to party.

Why pour confiscated alcohol down the drain, police in Sweden ask, when it can be repurposed for making biofuel?

A large trade in smuggled alcohol across the Baltic Sea from Denmark sees customs officials in Sweden confiscating a million bottles a year from purveyors trying to evade local taxes.

Hundreds of thousands of litres of alcohol used to be routinely poured down the drain, literally, but it has now become a contributor to Sweden’s fight against climate change.

The alcohol is now being shipped to a waste-to-fuels plant in Linköping, where it it's being added to bioreactors along with other waste. The resulting methane is being used to fuel biogas-powered vehicles like buses and taxis.

No word on how carbon-positive the move is (does it burn fossil fuel to get the stuff there than it displaces?) Nor how much might be intercepted [ed.: hic!] enroute.

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