#raised #alarm #Pinks #waste #dumping
Bot Church, Stockholm
Kerstin Macke Eriksson reported the company NMT Think Pink to the police for environmental crimes already in 2017, but the prosecutor dropped the case.
She lives 500 meters away in front of the Kassmyragropen where Think Pink had its reception center for the collected garbage. Every day she took walks in the water conservation area with her dog.
Kerstin Macke Eriksson in front of the gravel pit in Kassmyra which is now emptied of waste from the company Think Pink. Photo: Ali Lorestani
– There was incredible activity in the pit. Trucks came and went at all hours of the day, tipping things that absolutely should not be crushed and mixed.
In the spring of 2018, the waste mountain in Kassmyra spontaneously ignited.
– We couldn’t breathe. They had to close the Trollet preschool out here for several days because the smoke found its way inside.
Background. Bot Church, Stockholm
● In 2015, a newly started company applies to start environmentally hazardous operations in the Kassmyragropen in Botkyrka. The notification to the municipality concerns intermediate storage of waste, the same activity that the company Think Pink conducts in Kagghamra, a few kilometers away. The municipality has recently banned their activities and the matter is up with the county administrative board.
● The application is approved. The gravel pit quickly fills up with waste. Think Pink containers and sacks marked with Think Pink reveal that someone else is operating in the pit.
● After a year, Think Pink’s CEO Bella Nilsson appears on the board of the company.
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Kerstin Macke Eriksson collected 534 signatures from the area under the slogan: “Stop garbage disposal in Kassmyra.”
She was given half an hour with the senior politicians and civil servants.
– But they just said that everything is fine on site. The company has drainage wells under the garbage, nine of them.
– But have you checked that the wells are real, and that what the company says is true, I asked. Then they just sat as silent as two gaping perches. “No, we haven’t checked anything” was the answer.
The story took on a new dimension when the company’s consultants began to request the names and addresses of everyone who had complained about the municipality’s operations.
According to the police investigation, Think Pink had commissioned a security company to map those who complained about the business.
– There were residents out here who felt threatened. One of my friends was also checked in a very unpleasant and close manner, says Kerstin Macke Eriksson.
When Think Pink was to establish itself in Skultuna in Västerås, it was Kerstin Macke Eriksson who contacted the politicians in Västerås and warned about the business. But by then it was already too late. “I still get upset when I talk about it,” she says. Photo: Ali Lorestani
Hundreds of emails and calls to the municipality and the environmental administration made no difference, according to Kerstin Macke Eriksson. It was only when the mass media started covering the third fire, in Kagghamra, which broke out on Christmas 2020, that Botkyrka’s rulers woke up.
– The dangerous smoke went all the way into the inner city and the media started pressing. Everyone demanded responsibility and answers from Botkyrka’s politicians.
In the media reporting came it revealed that there were toxic dioxins in the extinguishing water from the fire.
Today, the burning garbage is located in Kagghamra still remain – covered with hundreds of tons of sand.
– The temperature is 15 degrees there now. Soon it will be possible to transport the waste, but I don’t know who will pay for it.
She remembers the evening when she saw on the news that the suspected crime she had seen outside the knot had now spread across Sweden.
– I was so pissed off and sad. In so many municipalities across the country, residents have sounded the alarm and resisted in exactly the same way as us, but no one has bothered.
DN has applied for Ebba Östlin (S) who was Botkyrka’s most responsible politician during this time, but she has not returned.
In an email, Botkyrka’s press manager Lennart Agén writes: “The citizens’ frustration is justified. We ourselves are equally frustrated. From the municipality’s side, we have acted based on current legislation, but it is clear that the law has major flaws and that it has affected Botkyrka.”
Botkyrka municipality banned the activity in Kagghamra in 2015. but the county administrative board overturned the decision.
Skultuna, Västerås
Maritha Dimander lives next to Think Pink’s facility in Skultuna. She remembers when the company came to the village in May 2018.
– There was smoke about the garbage, yes there was even a fire in the garbage in the trucks. They shuttled through the village during the day and rattled home empty at night. It sounded so loud that you sat up in bed.
“No one listened to us. I myself called the county administrative board several times about the matter without receiving either an answer or responsibility. We felt psychologically bad about what was going on,” says Maritha Dimander. Photo: Pavel Koubek
The burning garbage came from the fire in Kassmyragropen. Kerstin Macke Eriksson had called the politicians in Västerås and warned them about the company that had bought the plot in Skultuna. But by then it was already too late.
– The municipality had already approved the operation. They said it was on a small scale and that they had control, says Maritha Dimander.
Background. Skultuna, Västerås
● In 2018, Think Pink bought an industrial site in Skultuna in Västerås and sent in a notification to the municipality about environmentally hazardous operations.
● In May 2019, Västerås municipality temporarily stopped the importation of waste.
● In September 2020, the owners of the company Think Pink were arrested and detained. The waste in Skultuna, which was estimated at 39,000 tons, was abandoned on the site.
● In December 2023, the municipality began to remove the waste from Skultuna. 43 million was set aside for the work. In March this year, the money ran out and the work stopped. Thousands of tons of waste remain at the site.
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Soon the company lined up large bales against the road to block visibility.
– We here in the village thought they were filled with horse feed, but there was crushed hazardous waste in them, says Maritha Dimander.
But from a bird protection area on the other side of Svartån, a few meters from the area, which she took care of, she could follow what was happening.
– They put the construction waste in a large container and then something black that looked like soil spewed out straight towards Svartån, but it was nothing that the municipality’s environmental inspectors noted.
At one point it was poured large containers with liquid straight down into the Svartån which empties into Lake Mälaren.
– Nobody knows what was in these containers. I tried to get the municipality to take samples but they said it cost too much, she says.
The residents of Skultuna stopped sleeping with open windows. When they started questioning Think Pink’s methods on the company’s Facebook page, the mood turned unpleasant. The CEO, Bella Nilsson, dismissed the accusations in a letter and claimed that they must be mentally ill and delusional who suffer from the “environmentally friendly spearhead facility”. She also wrote that they should think about what they said because they could face jail time for defamation.
Maritha Dimander saw how the company raised the ground surface inside the area by several meters. “It was ground up colorful garbage mixed with what looked like soil. ” Photo: Pavel Koubek
Soon after, the waste mountains in Skultuna also started to burn.
– We had to close all preschools in the village for several days. The worst was for those who lived right next door, there were elderly people who couldn’t bear to call the municipality themselves and a family with children where both the mother and the children were very allergic.
Maritha Dimander is more disappointed with the municipality’s politicians and environmental inspectors than the suspected perpetrators.
– The crooks have done this to make money, but the supervisors at the municipality have been so terribly gullible and irresponsible. They have been there a few times just looking and asking and believing the answers.
Anna Thunell (MP) was chairman of the environmental committee in Västerås during the period 2016-2022. She understands that the residents of Skultuna are frustrated, but says that the municipality did everything they could within the framework of the legislation.
– It is not true that we were there only a few times or that we swallowed everything the company said. We did a lot of inspections. Three people worked on this full time.
– I can understand that the residents thought it was slow. But it’s about what we really wanted to do when we banned the business because the company had its own lawyers who appealed everything to the county board. If we had acted too quickly without evidence, the county administrative board would have torn up our decisions, which happened in Botkyrka and Laxå.
When Anna Thunell forbade Think Pink to bring in more waste to the Skultuna area, she was notified by the company’s lawyer. In the JO notification, which must be served to the person being notified, a survey that the company had made about her was presented.
– They had found out everything about me; where I was born, what family I had, where I went to school, what parish I was born in, what car my husband drove. It was completely irrelevant and terribly unpleasant. I interpreted it as an attempt to scare me into silence.
During the same period, strange cars with people in them also began to appear parked for long periods outside her and her husband’s home.
– We live quite isolated out in the country, so we know which cars belong to the area and which cars don’t, says Anna Thunell.
Röfors, Laxå
Björn Brohmée was the face of Röforsborna’s opposition to Think Pink.
When he read the 45,000-page police investigation, he was amazed at how often he was on the suspects’ radar.
– They write that I am a problem and that it is time for me to feel the “weight of waste”. If I had read this, I would have moved away from here.
“It was a terrible time. I get upset just thinking about it,” says Björn Brohmée, who led the village of Röfors’ resistance to Think Pink in Laxå. Photo: Pavel Koubek
It has been four years Björn Brohmee, 73, appeared almost daily in the media around the country.
He was the one who became the spokesperson for the Röfors residents’ resistance to the waste mountain and the facility that established itself in the small community with 200 inhabitants in the summer of 2019.
– The environment here became unbearable. When you came out in the morning to pick up the newspaper, everything was covered in a thick layer of dust. We could no longer sit in our gardens.
Background. Röfors, Laxå
● In the summer of 2019, the facility was established in Röfors where Think Pink’s waste was dumped and buried.
● The setup was the same as in Kassmyra in Botkyrka and in Skultuna: Construction and demolition waste was ground into sand in a large spraying mill. Bales full of waste were piled high to obstruct the view.
● A local recycling company was officially running the business, but it was soon discovered that Think Pink was living inside the area.
● The owners of the recycling company are charged with environmental crimes in the indictment against Think Pink.
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Björn Brohmée was there the waste area almost daily and documented with his camera what was going on.
Through Facebook, he got in touch with residents in Skultuna and Botkyrka and started an action group against the tip. The whole village joined the group.
– We residents made around 50 reports to the municipality. We wrote and called but everything was rejected by the environmental administration, who replied that they saw no problem with the business, he says.
The Röfors residents collected the entire village’s signatures against waste management. During an open meeting with the municipality, they handed over the collection of names.
Björn Brohmée’s open resistance had consequences. One day a car from the company was parked outside Björn and his partner’s house. In the car sat a Think Pink employee whose name Björn Brohmée knows “and glared and looked menacing”. The car and the person stayed for several days.
– It was open stalking, says Björn Brohmée, who reported the incidents to the police.
Björn Brohmée was at the area almost daily and documented with his camera what was going on. Photo: Pavel Koubek
He has been summoned for police questioning and will testify in the big trial against the company that awaits after the summer.
– Now that I am no longer a threat to their income, I am not afraid.
What has been the worst part of this story?
– That this could happen with the approval of the supervisory authorities and politicians. This went on for 1.5 years and they completely neglected us who lived here.
– If you are a villain, you commit crimes. But those who served the money on platters to the crooks were the authorities.
Bo Rudolfsson (KD) was Laxå the municipality’s most responsible politician during this time. He does not think that the residents know everything that the municipality did.
– It is not true that we did not act. We banned the business on two occasions, but everything was canceled by the county board, which thought we were going too hard.
The recycling company’s Think Pink’s former CEO Bella Nilsson, who has changed her name today, is charged with serious environmental crime in 21 locations in Sweden together with her former husband and 3 other people connected to the company.
She declines through her lawyer to participate in the article and respond to the criticism leveled at her and the company.
“There has been massive media coverage of this since September 2020. It is not possible for her to respond to all the allegations. My client denies the crime and her question of guilt will be examined in the trial,” writes lawyer Jan Tibbling in a text message to DN.
This has happened.
● In the middle days of 2023, charges were brought against eleven people linked to the recycling company Think Pink, in what is to be the largest environmental crime investigation in Swedish history.
● Five of them were charged with serious environmental crimes: among others the company’s CEO Bella Nilsson and her ex-husband Thomas Nilsson and the TV celebrity Leif-Ivan Karlsson.
● A sixth person, an environmental consultant at the reputable company WSP, who acted as the company’s guarantor to regulatory authorities, was charged with aiding and abetting a serious environmental crime.
● Five property owners who stored the company’s waste were charged with environmental crimes.
● According to the prosecutor, tens of thousands of tonnes of unsorted waste have been dumped and in several cases buried in the ground at 21 locations in Central Sweden.
● Harmful levels of arsenic, dioxins, lead, zinc, copper and petroleum products have been found in several places.
● All suspects deny any crime. The penalty scale for serious environmental crime is imprisonment for a minimum of six months and a maximum of six years.
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The legislation that enabled the suspected crime
● Think Pink’s facilities were subject to the provisions of the Environmental Code for reportable C activities.
● It says that you may sort and temporarily store up to 10,000 tonnes of non-hazardous waste without needing a permit and investigation from the County Administrative Board.
● The supervisory authority for C-obligatory activities is the municipality’s environmental inspectors, and the supervision is largely based on self-inspection – that the company itself performs samples and volume measurements and reports at the municipality’s request.
● The criminal investigation shows that Think Pink’s environmental consultants and waste brokers have many times manipulated and falsified the papers and sampling that were sent to the municipality’s environmental inspectors.
● Several environmental administrations have tried to stop the company when they discovered that the operation did not comply with the notification (too large volumes, hazardous waste on site, etc.), but were prevented by the county administrative board, which tore up the decisions after Think Pink’s lawyers appealed.
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Read more:
Garbage was to be recycled – buried in Swedish nature
The environmental crime expert: “Our grandchildren have to pay with their freedom”
Eleven are prosecuted after the extensive garbage scandal in the Think Pink mess
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