Waste company ARC is putting the final touches on a new sorting facility on Amager that will handle residual household waste from Copenhagen, Frederiksberg and Tårnby. It is the first plant of its kind in Denmark, DR reported.
The facility pulls recyclable material out of residual waste before it is sent for incineration: plastic, metal, paper, cardboard and food and drink cartons. "We want to increase recycling. There are a great many people in the three municipalities who live in apartments, and when it is a long way to the bin, then waste sorting is poorer," said Jacob H.
Simonsen, director at ARC.
Henrik Wenzel, professor at the Institute for Green Technology at the University of Southern Denmark, called the plant fundamentally a good idea. "It is more and cheaper than sorting the waste manually in the household," he said. But he described sorting in households combined with sorting at the plant as a bad combination.
"It becomes far too expensive. The plant is a good idea, so it is sorting in the households that should be spared. He pointed first and foremost to plastic and food and drink cartons. "They can with advantage be left in the residual waste, and then you can handle it automatically at the plant.
It is both cheaper and better that way."
Citizens will keep sorting at home exactly as they do today, with the plant acting as an extra safety net, according to ARC's director. "When we sort the waste at home, it has a quality that is very well suited to recycling. The plant is a supplement that gets the last recyclable things out of the residual waste," Simonsen said.
Wenzel said he hopes the Amager plant can be the first step towards a new way of handling waste in Denmark. "I am fairly sure that at some point it will come in all municipalities. And then you also admit that you have to drop some sorting in the households."
Copenhagen's mayor for climate, environment and technology, Line Barfod (EL), said less sorting in Copenhagen homes is not on the drawing board with current technology. "It is not with the current technology, but I hope that with this sorting plant we can help to develop the technology," she said. She said nobody wants people to sort just for the sake of sorting, but the aim is recycling of resources at the highest possible level, and she hopes the technology gets better and better.