Keep it trashy Copenhagen...

Yesterday I visited the Copenhagen Museum's exhibit on trash in the city. It covered historical aspects of where it used to go and who cleaned it up, as well as modern over-consumption and how the city is dealing with it. But it was a very interesting exhibit!

The outside was decorated with trash sort of formed into this arch. It was a neat sort of urban art thing (it's specifically there for the exhibit, so once that's over, I'm sure this trash art will be torn down :/)

Essentially, the exhibit focused on the shear magnitude of waste created each day, how it was dealt with 200 years ago, and how much it has increased, particularly following WWII.

This is a pretty horrible picture of a waste bin from around 1300's. With all the renovations the city has done in the past few years (especially expanding the metro and S-train systems), a lot of items from Copenhagen's founding have been found! There's even a law that in certain areas of the city, if you are doing renovations, you have to allow a group of archaeologists to examine the area. The basement of one of DIS's buildings apparently had quite a bit of ancient relics buried beneath it!

Denmark currently burns a majority of its waste to provide heat for the population. They actually completely stopped landfilling in 1997 for waste incineration, and with the filters on the burners, it is a fairly environmentally friendly method of generating heat. Rather than the trash being "out of sight and out of mind," as it is in a majority of developed countries, it is reused for something a country this far North certainly needs. However, while the filters on the furnaces are extremely efficient and there is little air pollution, each waste incineration  plant has a huge amount of ash and other residue left over as a by product. Above is an image of a scale model demonstrating the amount of ash accumulated over several years to the parking lot of a plant. Because of the chemical composition of the ash (primarily a variety of metals) it won't actually decompose, at least not in out life time. So, while this method of waste disposal does prevent massive landfills, it does not address the issue of massive waste being produced everyday.

So, that was a large point of the exhibit, simply to demonstrate that Denmark is certainly has environmentally conscious practices in place (even simply charging per bag at the grocery store), they do not really even began to address the actually issue of overconsumption (even that there is no plastic recycling, because it creates more energy when burnt than many other materials, with not regard to the fact that it could easily be reused almost entirely)

However, the museum also had several little, quirky facts about the city, such as the origins of several large street names. Obviously, 100s of years ago, there was no trash incinerator or even garbage men to remove rubbish, so where did it go? Into the streets, of course! This huge about of litter and the awful smell inspired many street names, such as Magstraede, which something along the lines of the dump There have been several attempts to change the name, but with no success!

Everyday for a month, a furniture designer would rummage through trash and find a piece of a chair. At the end of the month, he had enough usable materials to create this!

Rats in the city have been historically a huge problem for the city (in fact, the reason my house isn't allowed to have a container for food compost is that the municipality is worried about it drawing rats. A request was sent in again sometime last semester, but that was months ago and we haven't heard anything yet...

Anyway, to address this problem in the 1930's. the city offered a cash price per rat tail brought in. Over 130,000 rats were brought in over a week, at at about half a kroner each. 

This particular exhibit is only temporary, but was set up by Danish college students. They incorporated several really interesting aspects, such as pipes around the room that had certain smells (such as what the streets of Copenhagen smelled like in the 1500's, eek), and a full sized (empty) dumpster in the middle that you could climb in and out of (I guess to demonstrate how easy it is to dumpster dive. It seems like a crazy thought, but an incredible amount of perfectly good food is thrown out, especially at restaurants and bakeries. I don't remember what the actual statistic was, but there was something about how the amount of food thrown away could feed the entire population of starving peoples. Just like that. Not that I am going to jump in a dumpster anytime soon, but I am definitely going to think twice about what I'm buying and kind of keep an idea of the crazy amount thrown away every day.

This is the amount of packaging thrown away from one family of 4 in one week. That's it! Just wrappers on food, bags, etc.

There was also a section on the push to consume less and reuse more as a financial or political need, rather than to be environmentally friendly. During WWII, especially before the Nazi invasion, there simply was not much available to waste. The above poster asks citizens to give their bad food to the army, which would then be used for animal feed. I think it's interesting what incentives motives people to truly change their habits. Even here, where a majority of people bike, it typically does not have anything to do with being "environmentally friendly," but because it is easier and cheaper. And here, because the country as a whole needed to save money and resources, the citizens did! 

But, back to my over consumption spiel, they asked several teenagers to list everything they had bought that year (not including food), and how much they still used a few months ago. It was so eye opening to realize how much I really have, and while I am very fortunate to be able to afford it all, I don't need a majority of it! It's just part of the culture, and I don't really question it. But, what we throw away, isn't just whisked away by a magic truck to just disappear into thin air. It goes somewhere. All of it. And that's just going to continue to accumulate as rates of consumption increase (also, 99% of what most Americans by not be in use after 6 months. So only 1% lasts more than half a year? Seriously!? Gah, this is seriously turning into a hippy-dippy "I hate society" rant, which I definitely don't want it to be, but there is just so many opportunities to cut waste that just aren't even considered because there are other ways that are easier and more convenient. I mean, I throw things away and everything too, so I don't mean to imply that "Oh you horrible people, ruining everything," because that's not true. I just think that these are issues that aren't talked about. And maybe they should be)

While I'm on the subject of things that aren't talked about, here's a short video about oil production on Nigeria. I took Global Environmental Justice last semester, and it's definitely something that, again, just is never addressed, so when a current professor shared this video, I wanted to pass it on again:

http://vimeo.com/35967521

Oh hey there beautiful Copenhagen! On a much happier note, I am cooking dinner for my house tomorrow night using food from the local food co-op! 20 people. 2 bags of veggies. 3 hours. We'll see how this goes....

Hope everyone is doing well!!