I don't know which part of Sweden the author lives in, but it's apparently not my part. In our trash room here we have bins for glass (white/coloured), paper, batteries and garbage. Card board boxes and other "big" stuff (basically anything that isn't normal consumables) is left at the recycling station (and assuming you do that on your way to work and don't go once per item, the extra energy needed is next to nothing).
I'd say that he's trying very hard to make a point, and exaggerates.
I also live in Sweden, and in all the places I've lived, recycling has always been optional. If you don't want to recycle anything, you can just throw everything in the general trash, and noone will know or complain or charge you extra for it.
That said, I read an article many years ago by the head of our environmental protection agency, and he rightfully pointed out the externalizing of the cost of sorting on the population, but most importantly he pointed out that recycling of some materials is completely negative, i.e. it is cheaper and uses less energy to create fresh material than recycle the old.
The materials that did make sense to recycle though was glass, newspaper and aluminium cans. By not recycling milk cartons or plastic containers, you're doing more for the environment than if you recycle them.
The lesson learned is of course that you should always have science to back up your viewpoint, only by making a lifecycle analysis can you find out if a certain activity really is good for the environment, or if it's only good for your conscience.
I've never understood why we recycle glass. It doesn't seem like the materials to make glass are in short supply. Is it just much more costly to gather them new than to melt down existing glass containers?
At least in some areas, the glass can be plainly reused, instead of going through a full recycling process. In Canada, the brown glass beer bottles can be washed and refilled over a dozen times before failing quality checks and needing to be ground and remelted.
I live in a (rent-controlled) apartment in Stockholm. Our apartment building does not have a trash room; all storage needs to happen in the apartment. The recycling center is easily reachable on foot though, so there's no driving involved.
For people living in the suburbs, the nearest station can easily be a kilometer or so away, which might be further than you're willing to walk, carrying a week or two's worth of recyclable materials.
Like many other commenters below, I too reacted at the single-minded economical focus of the article, while still agreeing that the current recycling system is a bit ... annoying, heh.
I used to live in a suburb. It was still developing so there was no local trash pickup. Not enough residents to pay for a truck to come and the trash company wouldn't provide the service at an agreeable price. Almost everyone through the bag of trash on the trunk (boot) of the car and drove to the dumpster while heading to work.
There was recycling bins but no one used them. Carrying one bag (unrestrained) was tricky enough, adding 3 smaller ones was too much work.
The thing with recycling is it has to be convenient to be effective. Even if there is a small price to pay. And people will do it without even thinking about it. Previously it was only glass and cardboard. Then they added aluminum, plastic, and small appliances. It went from 3 bins to 5. Now there are two, one for recyclables and one for everything else. The center sorts it for us (us being my parents since I moved away).
There was a definite "OMG the socialism is the evil!" bend to that article. I was almost expecting to read about forced recycling labor camps where they eat babies.
I am not discounting problems in Swedish recycling but the article was a bit over the top.
I'd say that he's trying very hard to make a point, and exaggerates.