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What’s waste worth to you?
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What’s waste worth to you?
Each year, Denmark’s 5.4 million citizens generate 14 million tons of waste. It’s a large amount of material, but also a valuable resource to helpfuel sustainable growth. The challenge is to see the potential in waste and manage it in the most efficient way.
Attitudes to waste are changing. Despite the fact that waste generation levels are rising worldwide, waste is now increasingly viewed as an exploitable resource and not just as an environmental burden. Proactive governments are adopting sustainable waste management measures of prevention, reuse, recycling and energy recovery, in order to maximise the extractable value of waste and minimise loss.
Maximising efficiency
Denmark has taken a leading role in improving waste management and today has substantial expertise, especially in waste recycling and energy recovery.
The Danish approach to waste management is to optimise resource exploitation via a waste hierarchy which prioritises recycling over energy recovery over landfill. The model has proved highly efficient, with the result that only 7% of all waste generated in Denmark is disposed of at landfills.
Source separation is a key feature of Danish waste management. Collection systems for paper, cardboard and glass enjoy widespread acceptance and are used extensively by both citizens and enterprises.
Reuse and recycling in various forms account for 67% of all waste, through practices such as rinsing and refilling bottles, remelting cans and glass to make new products, or recycling of residues from waste incineration through use in road construction etc.
Energy is recovered by incineration of the remaining waste in incineration plants to generate electricity and district heating. In fact, the generated heat from waste incineration covers approx. 20% of district heating in Denmark. Emissions from waste incineration are overall CO2-neutral, except for incineration of plastics based on fossil fuels, and in alignment with the Danish government’s plan to reduce CO2 emissions by 30% by 2020.
Green taxes
The Danish waste model is a combination of administrative measures including EU regulations and national regulations on waste as well as various economic measures such as taxes and duties. Denmark has a general state tax on waste, which is differentiated to encourage recycling and preven-tion of waste. Landfill carries a higher tax than incineration, while recycling is tax exempt. So-called “green taxes” are also applied to certain forms of waste such as packaging and plastic bags.
Avoiding waste
Denmark has established deposit and return systems for a number of packaging types in-cluding beer and carbonated soft drinks, to encourage their return for reuse or recycling instead of being incinerated or landfilled.
Most beer and soft drinks are sold in reusable bottles. This enables Denmark to avoid management of some 390,000 tonnes of waste every year.
Related Case: Vestforbrændingen serves 1 in 6 Danes
Vestforbrænding is Denmark’s largestintermunicipal waste managementcompany.
Case: Vestforbrænding serves 1 in 6 Danes
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