How can you eliminate thousands of tons of household trash and provide year-round family skiing?
Denmark has an answer: build a ski resort on top of a garbage incinerator.
Copenhagen will break ground next year on a new waste-to-energy incineration plant that will support three ski slopes on its roof – including one of the country's few black diamond runs.
"It counters the unfortunate geographical condition Danes have," said David Zahle, a partner at BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, the architecture firm behind the project. "It is cold enough to have snow, but we don't have the topography for skiing."
Incinerators remain hugely controversial among North American environmentalists who argue that recycling, not burning trash, should be the focus for governments. But in Denmark, the plants have been embraced as a both a crucial method of waste disposal and a vital source of heat and electricity. Just 4 per cent of Denmark's garbage goes to landfills while 42 per cent is recycled. Fifty-four per cent is incinerated, the most of any nation in the European Union, according to Eurostat data.
Copenhagen's Amagerforbraending plant will cost $575-million (U.S.) and will burn up to 560,000 tons of trash annually, generating enough energy to heat 400,000 households, Mr. Zahle said. It will also be the largest building in the capital, as visible from Copenhagen's harbour as the national opera house.
A vertical elevator will carry skiers to the top of a rooftop hill planted with pine trees and dotted with picnic tables. The surface of the slopes will be made with a special material to allow skiing year round.
And in case you forget about the mountains of waste churning beneath the slopes: the plant's smokestack will puff out a 30-metre ring every time it emits one ton of carbon dioxide. At night, heat-tracking lights will position lasers on the smoke rings to turn them into "works of art."
The idea is to remind city residents of the impact their consumption habits have on the environment, Mr. Zahle said.
"My kid will be able to stand in the middle of Copenhagen and count the amount of rings," said Mr. Zahle. "It will take something ungraspable and intangible and make it real. One of the things we know about human behaviour is that knowledge and understanding helps people change."
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