Context
Amsterdam is situated in the Netherlands, a low lying country. The city is famous for its culture, which includes cycling, Anne Frank’s House and The Van Gogh Museum. In the late 20th century the amount of spare land has reduced significantly which has forced the government to find ways to reduce their reliance on landfill.
The approach to waste
- Avoid creating waste in the first place
- Recover valuable raw materials
- Generate energy by incinerating residual waste
- “Lansink’s Ladder“
Why reduce landfill waste?
- Lack of space
- Environmental deterioration
- Public objection to landfill due to smell, soil pollution and groundwater contamination.
Strategies to reduce amount of landfill
- Introduced a landfill tax in 1995 on each tonne of material landfilled which gave waste companies the financial incentive to look for other methods of dealing with waste.
- The tax was increase each year
- A landfill ban that banned 35 types of waste categories was introduced in 1995
Waste to energy incineration in Amsterdam: the Afval Energie Bedrift (AEB) incineration plant
- Waste-to-energy (W2E)
- Capable of producing 1 million MWh of electricity annually
- Heating for several communities around Amsterdam
- Produces 300,000 gigajoules of heat annually
- 1.4 million tons of waste brought to the plant
- 64% of waste in plant recycled
- Complex cleaning process that scrubs the gases
- Waternet water treatment plant next door works with the AEB
- Produces 438 kilotons of CO2 less than other disposal methods.
The plant has proved to be both more economically and environmentally effective than landfill. Regardless, the government is moving away from waste disposal to overall waste reduction.
Further reading
AQA Geography Forth Edition Hodder Education page 424 – 425
Jack Williams Geography 