THEY say you can never truly throw anything “away”. Well, I’m looking at “away” right now – a state-of-the-art rubbish dump outside Helsinki, Finland, that forms a critical part of the country’s mission to become a no-waste economy by 2025.
The Ämmässuo Waste Treatment Centre in Espoo serves 1.1 million residents of inner Helsinki. Everything they bin – literally everything – ends up here. That is 457,000 tonnes of garbage a year, and what happens to it next is about as good as it gets in terms of environmental stewardship. But as I am about to find out, even that isn’t good enough.
Ämmässuo used to be a landfill; between 1987 and 2007, it swallowed 11 million tonnes of waste. Landfill is the logical conclusion of the linear economy, in which products are made, used and then discarded. But in 2016, Finland became the first country in the world to commit to becoming a carbon neutral, circular economy that produces no waste. That means reusing and recycling everything, and the country has just seven years left to meet its deadline.
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I tour the 200-hectare centre with Roni Järvensivu, an environmental engineer at the not-for-profit company HSY, which manages the site. It is an almost post-apocalyptic landscape, reminiscent of Glastonbury festival after everyone has gone home. There is a faecal smell in the air. Diggers and lorries trundle in the distance.
But progress is evident across the site. We drive past a new landfill section that opened in 2007. It covers 54 hectares, but only 12 have been used. At the diminishing rate it is being filled, no more will ever be needed, says Järvensivu.
Right now only 1 per cent of the waste brought here ends up in landfill, but the goal is to get to zero. Everything else is reused or reprocessed. Glass, paper, plastics and cartons are sent to recycling facilities elsewhere. Organic materials are fermented to create methane, which feeds a gas-fired power plant. Landfill gases also go into the plant. What is left of the organic waste becomes compost.
All of this is possible because of Helsinki’s well-oiled recycling system. Households are given containers for glass, metal, paper, cartons, plastics and biodegradables; everything else goes into general waste.
“By 2025, Finland plans to produce no waste. Everything must be reused or recycled”
The onus is on residents to take the lead. “They do the sorting themselves,” says Järvensivu. Households pay on average €200 a year to have their waste collected and processed. The more a household sorts, the less it pays.
Yet many people still throw everything into the general waste. In 2014, the most recent data, 40 per cent of food waste was still dumped in general rubbish bins. Renters were the worst offenders, as waste fees are often included in rent. This mixed waste is a big problem to squaring the circle of a circular economy. Separating it later is too expensive.
I meet this mixed waste at its final destination, a new power station in the satellite town of Vantaa, which uses it to produce electricity and heat. Every year, Vantaa Energy burns 380,000 tonnes of mixed garbage – about half of all Greater Helsinki’s waste, including that sorted for recycling. In other words, compliance with recycling is about 50 per cent.
For a country that styles itself as the greenest in the world and is aiming for a circular economy within a decade, that’s deeply disappointing. “Some people don’t care, some people won’t follow the rules. We’re going to need some mind changes,” says Kalle Patomeri, Vantaa’s production manager.
It gets worse. The power station produces carbon dioxide. Given that half its feedstock is plastic, it is essentially burning 190,000 tonnes of fossil fuels a year. The ash returns to Ämmässuo, where it ends up in… landfill.
Back in my hotel room, I throw away a juice carton and banana peel, but later fish them out of the bin and take them to a recycling point. Perhaps more people would benefit from a visit to “away”.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Towards a world without landfill”
