The city government of Rome, Italy, will start sending 900 tons of garbage to Amsterdam for incineration every week from April 2023.
In a city with a population of about 4 million inhabitants, more household waste is produced than can be disposed of, reports Euronews.
According to local authorities, sending garbage 1,700 km away for incineration is a more ecological solution to the problem than burying it.
The material emphasized that in 2022, a fire caused significant damage to the city's largest waste processing enterprise. The new installation will be commissioned no earlier than 2026.
The authors said that an alternative to sending garbage for incineration could be burying the waste. However, during their decomposition, a large amount of methane is released. This gas is a greenhouse gas and over 100 years has a warming potential approximately 25 times that of carbon.
It is noted that the city has entered into an agreement with the Amsterdam Waste and Energy Company (AEB), which has agreed to accept 900 tonnes of waste per week. For this, the waste will be pressed into huge bales and loaded into 16 railway cars. Rome will pay the AEB €200 per ton of waste, which is about €28 million over three years.
The article emphasized that burning waste harms the environment. Thus, from 1 ton of waste, about 1.3 tons of CO2, harmful ash and other toxic by-products are formed. However, landfills cause even greater environmental damage. However, the real solution to the garbage problem can be a sustainable approach, which primarily involves minimizing the amount of garbage produced.
"Landfilling of residual waste, which still occurs in many European countries, is a low-quality method of waste disposal with harmful consequences for the environment, mainly due to methane emissions," the AEB said in a statement.
It is noted that the energy produced as a result of incineration of waste can be used, but this is not possible when it rots in a landfill.
The agreement between Rome and AEB stipulates that the energy produced from this waste will heat houses in Amsterdam. AEB already provides heat to approximately 30,000 homes.
The article emphasized that such a situation is not unique, and garbage is often traded both in EU cities and countries within the bloc, and outside of it.
Earlier, EcoPolitic wrote, that in Rome, Italy, they plan to equip 1,500 schools and 70,000 public social housing buildings with solar panels and make them energy efficient.
As EcoPolitic previously reported, in Japan people sort all 100% of household waste, which, depending on the region, is taken to sorting stations and sorted independently into more than 35 items, or individual types of waste are removed according to the schedule. Ash from waste incineration is used to build new islands that increase the territory of the country.
