Residents near one proposed site for an incinerator fear it will pollute the environment and endanger their health, though the international company that plans to build the station in Latvia denies it.
The village of Acone near Salaspils has a population of only 500 people. The company "Gren Latvija" plans to invest 200 million euros to build a modern incinerator here, though the plot of land intended for industrial construction is currently overgrown.
The village of Acone is not the only one located relatively close to the planned waste incinerator. The settlements of Rūkiši and Silabrieži are about a kilometer away, while Salaspils, the largest city in the county, is less than five kilometers away.
Gren Latvija plans to burn up to 200,000 tonnes of household waste per year to produce heat and electricity.
Latvian Radio attended a public consultation organized by the company at Salaspils Culture House. The company has started an environmental impact assessment process since June, and a public consultation is one of the steps in that process.
About 100 residents had gathered in the hall, with about 150 watching online. The meeting lasted more than three hours, and the manager of Gren Latvija, Andris Vanags, answered questions about the plans.
Vanags explained to Latvian Radio that the plan is to burn non-hazardous household waste. Currently, Gren Latvija has facilities in Jelgava, Gulbene, Daugavpils and two in Rīga, where local renewable energy resources are used for energy production – mainly wood chips.
Plastic, wood, textiles, diapers and other items could be among the waste products to be incinerated. If there is no waste to burn, Gren plans to use low-grade biomass.
The publicly available plan shows the operation of the station in stages. The waste, after being brought in by truck, is placed into a special container, where it is mixed. After that, it goes to the furnace. The environmental impact assessment, which is currently in process and could be completed in about a year and a half, requires the evaluation of various alternatives. After that, the station will be designed and built, and should start working at Acone in 2029.
Ashes to ashes
The parent company of "Gren" is the Dutch company "Gren Holding Company BV". It has experience in waste recovery not only in Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom, but also in neighboring Lithuania. In Klaipeda, a waste recovery station was built 11 years ago, and in Kaunas four years ago.
What happens to the ashes produced in its Lithuanian stations?
"We have been cooperating with a Norwegian company for several years. They are interested in these calcareous materials, which are present in this dangerous ash in larger quantities. They use (the ash) in further processing," said Vanags.
That applies to light or fly ash. On the other hand, heavier slag ash is mainly used in the construction of parking lots and bicycle paths, as well as covering layers of waste in landfills.
The chairman of the board of Gren Latvija stated that the ash from the Latvian station will also go to Norway or another country where high-quality ash processing takes place.
The chosen method of waste incineration, as well as what kind of waste is put into the furnace, has a great influence on how much heavy ash or slag and how much fly ash will be produced during the combustion process.
According to Vanags it is fly ash that is considered the most dangerous. It contains small particles of substances harmful to human health and current technology cannot accurately measure their levels in the incineration chimneys.
"These are the most harmful substances that people usually worry about – dioxins and furans," said Vanags, adding that specialists were brought in twice per year to provide emissions data.
Pollution solution
But it is exactly dioxins and furans, small particles present in ash, that were discovered two years ago by researchers near the Kaunas regeneration station. Gren Group owns 49% of capital shares in Kaunas station, and Ignitis Group owns 51%.
Biomonitoring was carried out by two independent organizations: Toxico Watch and Zero Waste Europe, which cooperated with local partners.
Vanags did not deny the fact that the experts found pollution in the study, but it was not proven that the waste recovery station was the cause. According to him, there may be other sources of pollution: "From roads, or pollution brought in by rain, or from other industry that has been there historically. Modern reclamation plants no longer produce such pollution."
Domantas Tracevicius from Lithuania heads the non-governmental organization called "Žiedinė ekonomika" or "Circular Economy" which works with these issues in Lithuania. Its researchers collected samples of eggshells, conifers and moss within a three-kilometer radius around the Kaunas regeneration station for analysis.
"In some places, we found two substances harmful to humans - dioxins and furans. The risk is high, and of course such a study should still be carried out by the responsible state authorities. So far, the government and environmental protection authorities have not yet decided to do so," said Domantas Tracevicius.
Such studies have also been carried out in several other countries, such as Spain, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, France and the Netherlands. Also in these countries, researchers found high levels of persistent organic pollutants in the environment and food near incinerators, including dioxins and furans, and concluded that the harmful substances exceeded the pollution standards set by the European Union.
In total, three waste recovery stations operate in Lithuania - in Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipėda. Domantas Tracevicius recalled that local residents objected and protested against the construction of all the stations, just as people in Latvia are doing now:
"I think that Lithuania has too many waste incineration plants. For example, the Kaunas incineration plant has outcompeted some biomass burning cogeneration plants in the heat supply market."
In addition, the Kaunas station, contrary to the promise, has increased its capacity. Domantas Tracevicius said that Lithuania is facing the problem of importing waste. Although the law prohibits the import of domestic and hazardous waste from other countries into the country, from time to time a waste import scandal surfaces.
For example, in 2015, the Lithuanian news portal "Lrytas" wrote about a scandal at the Klaipėda regeneration station, which is fully owned by "Gren". At that time, almost 3,000 tonnes of waste from Ireland were imported into Lithuania, which the intermediary company tried to deliver to the waste incineration plant in Klaipėda.
In 2022, the second regeneration station partially owned by "Gren" in Kaunas was involved in another waste import scandal. At that time, the media of the neighboring country "Kauno Diena" reported that the Ministry of Environment suspected the import of waste from Poland.
Importing problems
Gren Latvija, when asked whether waste from other countries, including Latvia, is transported to Lithuanian stations, replied in writing: "95% of the non-recyclable, non-hazardous waste used in the recovery stations is of local origin. Production waste can only be imported in accordance with the established regulation, and each shipment must first receive a permit from the Lithuanian Environmental Service. The import of production waste in Lithuania is below 5%, and it is secondary wood and paper scraps."
Domantas Tracevicius said he would not recommend Latvia to build such a waste incinerator, because "then it will have to be fed". According to him, the amount of waste sorting should be increased first.
Rudīte Vesere, Deputy Secretary of State for Environmental Protection of the Ministry of Climate and Energy (KEM), explained to Latvian Radio that Latvia is one of the few European Union (EU) countries where waste incineration has not developed. She cited the EU's waste targets to be achieved by 2035:
"At least 65% for recycling, 10% for disposal. In perspective, the combustible fraction is decreasing more and more. We need to put more emphasis on recycling, waste cannot be the only fuel material."
Commenting on the scandals with the import of waste in Lithuania, Vesere said that the ministry is thinking about a potential ban on importing waste for incineration.
But how will Latvia ensure that waste is not imported across the EU's open internal borders? "There really is a need to think about all aspects at once in order to rule out any desire to circumvent the law and look for any illegal ways to do it," Vesere explained.
Waste of space
During its interviews, Latvian Radio gained the impression that another driving force for waste incineration stations in Latvia is so that the country can reduce the amount of waste in landfill, as required by Europe.
Atis Treija, director of the Waste Management Department of the State Environmental Service (VVD) said:
"Right now, looking at the data and looking at the amount of waste and the trends, unfortunately we have to say yes. We have to do something."
The Latvian waste management plan states that there may be several such incinerators in Latvia. A very small waste incineration station with a regeneration capacity of up to 15,000 tons per year will start working in Ventspils next year. In order to develop it, the local municipal company attracted EU co-financing.
The plan says that in Riga or in its immediate vicinity, with the possibility of providing a connection to the centralized heat supply network of the city of Riga, it is recommended to build a facility that regenerates around 110,000 tonnes of waste per year.
But the Gren Latvija project in Salaspils is not the only one trying to achieve that another one is planned only one kilometer away across the border in Ropaži county. There, the waste incineration project is planned to be implemented by the company Environmental Resource Center, the largest owner of which is the waste management company Clean R, which is a business related to the ex-prime minister Andris Škele.
That raises the prospect of two stations very close to each other both looking for large amounts of suitable garbage to burn. The question arises - will there be enough trash to go around? About 800 to 900 thousand tons of waste are produced in Latvia annually.
Intars Cakars, head of the Chemical Substances and Hazardous Waste Department of the Center for Environmental Geology and Metrology, was concerned:
"If both [incinerators] have a capacity of up to 200,000, then together we would need about 400,000 tonnes. No, we don't have that much! And also I don't think there will be [that much] in the near future. I don't think we will go the other way in terms of waste generation and start consuming even more."
According to him, there is a risk of waste being imported into Latvia, perhaps via intermediaries who classify waste as secondary raw materials.
Is Latvia's chosen waste management policy with such regeneration stations compatible with the country's efforts to combat climate change? Jūlija Gušča, associate professor of the Institute of Environmental Protection and Heat Systems of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Technologies of the Riga Technical University (RTU), explained that in Europe and also in other countries of the world, they hope to reduce the use of waste for energy production.
Currently, recycling is regarded as the real emphasis point. In Europe, countries are reducing the capacity of regeneration stations or closing them down altogether.
"We can already see that there is a shortage of resources, and they are looking for new resources that could be used to provide power to the stations that were once built," said Gušča.
Anna Doškina, head of the non-governmental organization "Zero Waste Latvija", assessed that burning waste is like the last straw that Latvia is clinging to: "At the moment, there is a general feeling that we will not survive without this burning, while environmental activists believe that by focusing this energy that we spend talking about burning, we could slowly achieve the goals. We are talking about separate collection of biological waste. As soon as everything becomes cleaner, then already recycling increases."
Doškina said the release of furans, dioxins and mercury from incinerators can lead to an increased risk of cancer and developmental disabilities in children.
Jānis Brizga, an environmental scientist and head of the "Green Freedom" association, also thinks that such regeneration stations are not needed in Latvia, because the amount of waste is reduced by only 75% when burned, while 25% of the mass of waste turns into dangerous ash.
"The cleaner the material, the more efficient it is to burn and also the more profitable to recycle. This is the main conflict that develops," explained Brizga.
