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A City That Turns Garbage Into Energy Copes With a Shortage
垃圾太少不够烧，奥斯陆人发愁
OSLO — This is a city that imports garbage. Some comes from England, some from Ireland. Some is from neighboring Sweden. It even has designs on the American market.
奥斯陆——这是一座进口垃圾的城市。有些垃圾来自英国，有些来自爱尔兰。有些来自邻国瑞典。它甚至有意从美国进口垃圾。
“I’d like to take some from the United States,” said Pal Mikkelsen, in his office at a huge plant on the edge of town that turns garbage into heat and electricity. “Sea transport is cheap.”
波尔·米克尔森(Pal Mikkelsen)在他的办公室里说，“我想要从美国进口一些。海运很便宜。”办公室位于奥斯陆城边缘的一座巨大工厂中。该厂将垃圾转化成热能及电力。
Oslo, a recycling-friendly place where roughly half the city and most of its schools are heated by burning garbage — household trash, industrial waste, even toxic and dangerous waste from hospitals and drug arrests — has a problem: it has literally run out of garbage to burn.
奥斯陆是一个热衷于回收利用的城市。城中约一半的地方，以及多数学校所用热能都来源于燃烧垃圾。这些垃圾包括家庭垃圾、工业垃圾、甚至是来自医院和截获毒品的有毒及危险垃圾。但是奥斯陆有一个问题：垃圾眼看就要烧完了。
The problem is not unique to Oslo, a city of 1.4 million people. Across Northern Europe, where the practice of burning garbage to generate heat and electricity has exploded in recent decades, demand for trash far outstrips supply. “Northern Europe has a huge generating capacity,” said Mr. Mikkelsen, 50, a mechanical engineer who for the last year has been the managing director of Oslo’s waste-to-energy agency.
这个问题不仅限于这座140万人口的城市。最近几十年，整个北欧都盛行通过燃烧垃圾供热发电，所以现在对垃圾的需求远远超过了供给。50岁的米尔克森是一名机械工程师，去年在奥斯陆的垃圾转化能源机构任常务董事。
Yet the fastidious population of Northern Europe produces only about 150 million tons of waste a year, he said, far too little to supply incinerating plants that can handle more than 700 million tons. “And the Swedes continue to build” more plants, he said, a look of exasperation on his face, “as do Austria and Germany.”
但是，他说，爱干净的北欧国家每年只能制造约1.5亿吨垃圾，远远不足以供给那些可以处理7亿多吨垃圾的燃烧厂。他脸上流露出烦恼的神色，说道，“而且瑞典人继续在建造更多工厂。奥地利和德国也是。”
Stockholm, to the east, has become such a competitor that it has even managed to persuade some Norwegian municipalities to deliver their waste there. By ship and by truck, countless tons of garbage make their way from regions that have an excess to others that have the capacity to burn it and produce energy.
东边的斯德哥尔摩已经成了奥斯陆的强力竞争对手，甚至说服了一些挪威城市把垃圾运过去。通过船或卡车，无数吨垃圾从垃圾过剩的地区，流向了能够燃烧垃圾制造能量的地区。
“There’s a European waste market — it’s a commodity,” said Hege Rooth Olbergsveen, the senior adviser to Oslo’s waste recovery program. “It’s a growing market.”
奥斯陆垃圾回收项目的高级顾问黑格·罗特·奥尔贝斯文(Hege Rooth Olbergsveen)说，“有一个欧洲垃圾市场，垃圾是这个市场上的商品。这个市场正在增长。”
Most people approve of the idea. “Yes, absolutely,” said Terje Worren, 36, a software consultant, who admitted to heating his house with oil and his water with electricity. “It utilizes waste in a good away.”
多数人认可这个观点。36岁的泰耶·沃伦(Terje Worren)是一名软件咨询师，他说，“是的，没错儿，这样能很好地利用能源。”他承认他的房子使用油取暖，用电烧水。
The English like it, too, though they are not big players in the garbage-for-energy industry. The Yorkshire-based company that handles garbage collection for cities like Leeds, in the north of England, now ships as much as 1,000 tons a month of garbage — or, since the bad stuff has been sorted out, “refuse-derived fuel” — to countries in Northern Europe, including Norway, according to Donna Cox, a Leeds city spokeswoman.
英国人也喜欢这个想法，尽管他们不是垃圾转化能源产业的主要参与者。利兹市发言人堂娜·考克斯(Donna Cox)说，约克郡有家公司处理利兹等英格兰北部城市的垃圾，现在该公司每月将1000吨垃圾——或者说是“源于废物的燃料”，毕竟已经把不好的部分分拣了出来——运往挪威等北欧国家。
A British tax on landfill makes it cheaper to send it to places like Oslo. “It helps us in reducing the escalating costs of the landfill tax,” Ms. Cox wrote in an e-mail.
由于英国有一种垃圾填埋税，所以将垃圾运往奥斯陆等地更加便宜。考克斯在一封邮件中写道，“这帮助我们降低因垃圾填埋税而不断升高的成本。”
For some, it might seem bizarre that Oslo would resort to importing garbage to produce energy. Norway ranks among the world’s 10 largest exporters of oil and gas, and has abundant coal reserves and a network of more than 1,100 hydroelectric plants in its water-rich mountains. Yet Mr. Mikkelsen said garbage burning was “a game of renewable energy, to reduce the use of fossil fuels.”
对于有些人来说，奥斯陆竟然求助于进口垃圾制造能源，似乎很奇怪。挪威是世界十大油气出口国之一，并有充足的煤炭资源。在水源丰富的山区有由1100多座水电站构成的网络。但是米尔克森称，燃烧垃圾是“一种可再生能源行为，可以减少化石燃料的使用”。
Of course, other areas of Europe are producing abundant amounts of garbage, including southern Italy, where cities like Naples paid towns in Germany and the Netherlands to accept garbage, helping to defuse a Neapolitan garbage crisis. Yet though Oslo considered the Italian garbage, it preferred to stick with what it said was the cleaner and safer English waste. “It’s a sensitive question,” Mr. Mikkelsen said.
当然，欧洲其他地区在制造大量垃圾，包括意大利南部。那里的那不勒斯等城市付钱给德国及荷兰的城镇，让后者接收垃圾，帮忙消解一场那不勒斯垃圾危机。但是，尽管奥斯陆也考虑过意大利的垃圾，却坚持使用更干净安全的英国垃圾。米尔克森称，“这是个敏感的问题。”
Garbage may be, well, garbage in some parts of the world, but in Oslo it is very high-tech. Households separate their garbage, putting food waste in green plastic bags, plastics in blue bags and glass elsewhere. The bags are handed out free at groceries and other stores.
在世界上的一些地方，垃圾可能就是垃圾。但是在奥斯陆，垃圾也属于高科技。居民把家庭垃圾分类，食物垃圾放在绿色塑料袋里，塑料垃圾放在蓝袋子里，玻璃垃圾放在其他地方。在杂货店或其他商店，可以免费领取这种袋子。
The larger of Mr. Mikkelsen’s two waste-to-energy plants uses computerized sensors to separate the color-coded garbage bags that race across conveyor belts and into incinerators. The building’s curved exterior, with lighting that is visible from a long distance to motorists driving by, competes architecturally with Oslo’s striking new opera house.
在米尔克森的两座垃圾转化能源厂中较大的那一座，这些不同颜色的袋子被放在传送带上，进入焚化炉之前，会用电脑控制的传感器对它们进行分拣。工厂的建筑外观是弧线型的，驾车从很远的地方就能看到工厂的灯光，美感和奥斯陆壮观的新剧院不相上下。
Still, not everybody is comfortable with this garbage addiction. “From an environmental point of view, it’s a huge problem,” said Lars Haltbrekken, the chairman of Norway’s oldest environmental group, an affiliate of the Friends of the Earth. “There is pressure to produce more and more waste, as long as there is this overcapacity.”
然而，不是人人都乐见这种垃圾癖。地球之友(Friends of the Earth)下属机构、挪威最古老的环境组织的主席拉尔斯·浩尔特布雷肯(Lars Haltbrekken)称，“从环境的角度看，这是个大问题。只要有这种产能过剩，就有制造越来越多垃圾的压力。”
In a hierarchy of environmental goals, Mr. Haltbrekken said, producing less garbage should take first place, while generating energy from garbage should be at the bottom.
他说，在环保目标的优先等级中，制造更少垃圾应该是首位的，而把垃圾转化成能源应该是最末位的。
Mr. Haltbrekken acknowledged that he does not benefit from garbage-generated energy. His home near the center of town, built about 1890, is heated by burning wood pellets, and his water is heated electrically. In general, he said, Friends of the Earth supports the city’s environmental goals.
他承认他并未从垃圾转化能源中受益。他的家靠近市中心，房子建于1890年左右，靠燃烧木颗粒取暖，用电烧水。他说，总体上来说，地球之友对本城的环保目标是支持的。
Yet he added, “In the short-term view, of course, it’s better to burn the garbage in Oslo than to leave it in Leeds or Bristol.”
然而他又说，“当然，从短期看，在奥斯陆燃烧垃圾，是比把垃圾留在利兹或布里斯托尔要好。”
But “in the long term,” he said, “no.”
但是他说，“从长远来看，不好。” |
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发表于 2013-7-16 23:46:51
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之前垃圾都是堆放在河边被水冲走了，我们这里喝的是山泉水，河水送往北京。的确还是填埋，不过专门建厂的话应该会考虑回收分类了，比河水冲走好，感觉有行动就会有进步
