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Case: Vestforbrænding serves 1 in 6 Danes
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Case: Vestforbrænding serves 1 in 6 Danes
Vestforbrænding is Denmark’s largest intermunicipal waste managemen tcompany. Located in the greater Copenhagen area, it services 19 municipalities, 60,000 business enterprises and 865,000 citizens – asixth of the entire Danish population.
Vestforbrænding operates in all kinds of waste treatment: recycling, incineration, land-filling as well as the sorting and handling of hazardous waste.
Recycling
Waste recycling has a very high priority at Vestforbrænding, and the volume of material collected for recycling is growing. More than 2,500 recycling containers are deployed for collecting newspapers, advertising and magazines, glass and bottles.
Most of the municipalities that Vestforbrænding serves have recycling centres. Visited by more than two million people each year, these recycling centres are very popular. Citizens can drop off their waste free of charge, provided they sort it into suitable categories for recycling, incineration or landfilling.
The largest recycling category is garden refuse. Vestforbrænding uses special composting centres, where garden refuse is crushed and compressed, so that it can be composted under optimum conditions. Similarly, the other waste is recycled or processed for recycling. Altogether, the waste is separated into more than 25 cate-gories, most of which are recycled.
The flue gas treatment is so efficient that Vestforbrænding operates far below the environmental limit values.
Landfilling
A minor part of the waste, which is unsuitable for both recycling and incineration, is landfilled in a disposal site south of Copenhagen.
Incineration
Waste from households or businesses that is neither recycled nor landfilled is incinerated by Vestforbrænding with generation
of electricity and district heating.
The incineration temperature reaches approximately 1000ºC, and the heat from the incineration process is used to produce steam, which is utilised to power a turbine which generates sufficient electricity to cover the average needs of about 80,000 homes. The bulk of the steam feeds through to a heat exchanger where it supplies enough energy to cover the average heating requirements of about 75,000 homes.
These years Vestforbrænding is expanding its district heating network dramatically – to the benefit of customers, Vestforbrænding and society, since the district heat is a substitute for more CO2 intensive energy sources such as oil and natural gas.
Vestforbrænding meets the requirements of the Danish national waste management plan by sorting waste in a number of categories and continues its efforts to increase efficiency in waste management for the benefit of the environment.
Related article: Is your environment healthy?
The environment affects our health in both positive and negative ways. Pollution, chemicals, noise and pathogens can do us harm, while healthy environments for living, working and recreation do us good.
What’s waste worth to you?
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