2023-04-18 10:07:42
Adriano Amalfi from Rome but also Orta di Atella (CE), Italy, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
CO2 emissions in the Netherlands are rising now that Italian household waste is being taken over by Dutch incinerators, says a study by ABN Amro. Some of these emissions might be avoided if plastics were removed from that waste, but that wouldn’t be possible right now, the study says.
From this month a weekly train with 900 tons of household waste will travel from Rome to the AEB incinerators in Amsterdam: waste that would otherwise be dumped in landfills around Rome is now used as raw material for energy production for companies and households of Amsterdam, explains AD.
However, this worsens the quality of the environment. Waste dumping produces a lot of methane, a strong greenhouse gas, and combustion releases less harmful CO2 than landfill emissions. The environmental gain it ends up only for the Italians, who are freed from their methane-producing waste, says AD, Amsterdam, on the other hand, is concerned regarding the emissions of incinerated waste. This causes CO2 and nitrogen in the air here.
“We look to the environmental benefits internationally,” said an AEB spokesperson, according to whom the operation remains within CO2 emission standards. The import of waste is necessary. “This allows us to run the plant as efficiently as possible.” Furthermore, the combustion in the AEB is only temporary: Rome wants to build its own plant to burn waste and AEB points out that Italian rubbish no longer results in CO2 emissions. The total amount of waste incinerated is not increasing, according to the company.
“Italian waste contains an average of 13% plastic waste,” ABN Amro’s David Bolscher told AD. “That plastic accounts for more than half of the CO2 emissions from waste incineration.” However, AEB cannot remove the plastic and the separation plant is already running at full capacity. “And in Italy they don’t have a separation plant for plastic waste,” says Bolscher. But according to the analyst, such an installation can be set up quite quickly. The problem, however, is that recycling plastic isn’t profitable: recycled plastic is much more expensive than virgin plastic.
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