Throw it, burn it, let it heat your home: Greenland’s garbage gets new life
Waste management executive explains how incinerated trash from surrounding communities heats Nuuk’s buildings
A small window shows the inside of Nuuk’s incinerator oven, where garbage is burned and converted into heat for 4,000 to 10,000 people. (Photo by Jeff Pelletier)
Those travelling down to Iqaluit’s causeway and fishing spots along the Sylvia Grinnell River might be familiar with a local site along the way: A large pile of garbage visible from the road.
Overflowing landfills are a fixture in many northern communities, but in Greenland trash gets a new life.
In the territory’s capital city of Nuuk, with a population of just more than 19,000, there is a system in place that not only removes garbage but helps keep people warm throughout the year.
Nuuk’s new incineration plant came into service in January.
Operated by ESANI A/S, Greenland’s national waste management company, the new facility replaces an older incinerator on the same site, which had been in service since 1989.
The new $50-million plant, financed partly through the Greenland government and a bank loan, connects to a district heating system that was already in place.
Frank Rasmussen, ESANI’s CEO, gave Nunatsiaq News a tour of the incinerator on June 28.
Garbage trucks drop off waste at the plant, and from there around 2,000 kilograms of garbage per hour is burned at temperatures over 850 C.
The heat energy generated in the incineration process is transferred to the city’s heat network, which warms between 4,000 to 10,000 people.
The plant operates 24/7 and is staffed by 10 employees.
“We can put the energy on the district heat net and then utilize it in people’s homes, or in the schools, or in the city hall, or whatever where it’s connected,” Rasmussen said.
The waste is used to produce heating “and then that means that we will have less import of oil because we use the waste instead.”
Rasmussen explained that through a chemical process, any harmful substances produced from burning garbage is filtered out.
He said around 90 per cent of what goes in gets fully incinerated. The 10 per cent that remains is either sent to a landfill or is scrap metal that can be recycled or repurposed.
Materials that can survive the incinerator process include cans and sheet metal.
Rasmussen said the new incineration system not only helps reduce landfill waste in Nuuk, but it will also help other communities. ESANI operates a ship that picks up garbage from other communities to be incinerated in Nuuk.
Another incinerator is under construction in Sisimiut, Greenland’s second-largest city. When operations begin there next year, Rasmussen floated the possibility that Greenland could start incinerating garbage shipped in from nearby Nunavut communities during the summer.
“When we finish our incinerator plant number two in a year with the one in Sisimiut, then we will have a capacity for probably 30 per cent more waste than we have in Greenland,” he said.
“Then, we’ll be able to import the rest.”
A solution for Iqaluit and Nunavut?
For years, municipal and Nunavut government officials have looked to Nuuk’s incinerator as a possible solution for Iqaluit and Nunavut’s waste management issues.
In 2014, Iqaluit city council passed a waste management plan that included an incinerator, but no such facility has yet been built.
In May, Iqaluit Coun. Romeyn Stevenson travelled to Nuuk as part of his work with Qikiqtani Inuit Association.
Speaking to Nunatsiaq News, Stevenson said an incinerator like the one in Nuuk could benefit Iqaluit. He suggested an incinerator in Iqaluit could collect and process waste from nearby communities during the sealift season.
“It’s not a crazy idea,” he said.
“It’s an idea that’s been discussed between the GN and the city since about 2017, with a significant lull in the COVID period. But it’s back on the board, so [it’s] something that people are talking about at the staff level as a potential and I, personally as a councillor, think it’s a great idea.”
Rasmussen said building a new incinerator like the one in Nuuk takes a lot of work and costs a lot of money, since it requires a connection to a district heat system. As well, training skilled staff takes three to four months.
That being said, Rasmussen added that he is regularly contacted by the Government of Nunavut, Inuit organizations and other groups in the territory about what options are available for collaboration, whether that includes importing landfill garbage or helping establish a new incinerator.
“I think there is a big potential in doing some co-operation on this,” Rasmussen said.
Nuuk's incinerator plant came into use in January. (Photo by Jeff Pelletier)
The thing , that never fails to amaze me is the amount of garbage , we create in the north.
Burning garbage releases a large amount of cancer causing agents into the air. There is no magic incinerator that erases these toxins. Its a bag of magic beans being sold to solve all your problems again.
Camping and hunting spots are littered from us and we cry at the mines about damaging the land?
We, Inuit, are not innocent of trash all over Nunavut.😪😥
Ten people working and 24/7 means it can’t be done in Nunavut.
From Nunatsiaq News May 22, 2014 Iqaluit’s try at a new garbage-disposal technology is proving to be more complicated than city council expected.
Touted as a state-of-the-art technology that reduces household waste to eight per cent of its volume, the “micro auto gasification system” (MAGS) seemed a perfect fit for the Nunavut capital, where the city’s overflowing dump is an environmental hazard.
City council received federal funding April 8, from the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency, to try out the new technology as a pilot project.
There was work in Cambridge bay on this front a few years ago for their landfill. I think POLAR even has a summary on the technology. It has been used on all garbage in Utqiagvik (Alaska’s northern most community) for over twenty years. It’s a proven gasification (cleaner than incineration) technology. And nothing like the MAGS system which another commenter brought up. Less automated (less problems) than what may be in use in Nuuk .
Maybe these sort of things get shared/discussed when SAOs from different communities meet.
On the Integrated community sustainability plan (ICSP toolkit) website, for Cambridge Bay, there is mention of it. Anyone know how that is progressing?
According to this article by POLAR in 2022, they actually tested the MAGS at Cambridge Bay but settled for a “simple incineration system”, TOS. But the article does not reveal anything on their experience with MAGS.
In other words, it does seem that Cambridge Bay ended up using incineration and not gasification (which btw is really not necessarily cleaner than incineration).
https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/polar-polaire/documents/publications/aqhaliat/volume-4/infosheets/waste-management-technologies-english.pdf
He said…”Good idea.”
Maybe GN will have more meetings and studies to “mess it up” for denial.
Yet most communities in greenland don’t have running water or flush toilets.
As demonstrated by Sherritt Gordon’s smelter outside Edmonton, and the one Inco finally got around to using in Sudbury, the technology exists to capture almost all the toxic nasties. The alternative to heat distribution is to generate electricity, which would widen the options for its location.