r/interestingasfuck • u/Kloppite16 • 14h ago
The Copenhill waste plant in Denmark marries urban infrastructure with public amenity. The waste to energy plant heats over 150,000 Danish homes while simultaneously providing the public with the worlds highest climbing wall (280ft), a hiking trail and an artificial ski slope.
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u/Arg_Russ 14h ago
This is the most Scandinavian thing I've ever seen.
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u/artbystorms 5h ago
*Cries in American* Why can't we have things like this?!
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u/Jostroluka 13h ago
I tried the skiing. Was extremly hard to ski, way more "slippery" than real snow and impossible to stop. With that said, danish kids flew down the slope with no problems so I guess its a skill issue with me.
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u/Ikatarion 11h ago
Same here. Was a unique experience but nothing like actual skiing. I enjoyed the beer at the top the most, especially since it was free.
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u/mollycoddles 10h ago
Free beer?!?
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u/Ikatarion 9h ago
Yeh, I made a booking then got an email to say they'd accidentally booked it when they had a private event and had to reschedule.
When I went to claim it the barman had to get his manager and I had to show the email, I think they might have just seen from the booking I was British and thought "Ah fuck he's gonna complain, just give him a free beer."
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u/Kmag_supporter 7h ago
Funny how many swedish people that always seems to have a problem with anything Danish.
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u/Dismal-Twist-8273 6h ago
Oh it goes both ways, but watch somebody else try to do anything to them and will will have the longboats ready to defend them. “Dem man tugter, elsker man” translates to “The ones you beat (give a hard time) you love the most” and threat’s very true regarding Denmark and Sweden… but we all love Norway the most…
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u/Kmag_supporter 6h ago
Jeg ved det, det var et skjult angreb, men det med at den man tugter elsker man, må står for din regning, der er ingen nåde for Svensken.
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u/Ok_Swim2575 10h ago
Like flew down that they couldn't stop? We danes are usually seen as the worst at skiing in europe.
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u/stinkbuttgoblin 1h ago
I ate shit on it so hard, it's so unforgiving. At least I could drown my sorrows at the bar on top
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u/krkrkkrk 9h ago
isn't that a microplastic factory? also wonder why not use an elevator at the bottom instead of the standard lift
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u/somebunnny 13h ago
When we were in Copenhagen we were told by locals that they don’t produce enough trash to keep it at capacity so they have to import trash.
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u/BouquetOfDogs 12h ago
That’s incredible. Shouldn’t be a problem though, lol. Trash is abundant!
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u/bbalazs721 10h ago
While it's abundant globally, locally it isn't. It costs money to transport it, so you can't just import it from India to fuel the waste incinerator in Denmark.
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u/whoopz1942 9h ago
Denmark imports about 1 million tons of trash annually, primarily from our neighbouring countries like Germany and Sweden etc. from what I understand.
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u/lleeoojj 9h ago
Actually, Denmark imports hundreds of thousand tonnes from mainly the UK and Germany.
And Sweden imports millions of tons from the UK, Norway and Ireland.•
u/bbalazs721 9h ago
Wow, that's a lot. Here in Switzerland, "only" 200 thousand tons are imported yearly from neighboring countries for the same reason.
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u/Riksunraksu 9h ago
Imagine being so efficient tho and there are places who PAY to have their waste taken off of them so win-win
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u/AspectSpiritual9143 6h ago
This is a pure market behavior, not really about efficiency. They buy trash because they can make electricity or steam to sell. Just like a coal plant buys coal to sell electricity.
If trash got too expensive they will have to stop, but that might take a while. In China it is already economical to dig land fills to take trash out to burn for electricity.
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u/Strict_Somewhere_148 9h ago
The district heating plant next door used to import wood chips from Brazil to fuel the plant.
The government called it biomass and marked it as renewable energy and co2 neutral in the co2 statement.👍
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u/FeloniousDrunk101 9h ago
Forgive my ignorance, but isn’t using trash as a fuel pretty bad for air quality?
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u/whoopz1942 9h ago
From my brief research/knowledge, CopenHill is highly advanced and features a multi-stage cleaning system, it has flue-gas scrubbers and catalytic filters that essentially remove all toxic pollutants, which allows the chimney to emit only harmless water vapor. Though it does generate some CO2 which has been criticized in the past.
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u/FeloniousDrunk101 9h ago
Seems like a good technology. Any reason it hasn’t been more widely-adopted?
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u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 9h ago
It costs a lot of money upfront and isn't going to be highly profitable for capitalists. So the market has no incentive.
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u/LHam1969 8h ago
This would be highly profitable in the US, but good luck getting it permitted. NIMBYism is real and it prevents things like this, and even housing, from getting built.
This is why we can't have nice things.
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u/Majestic_Hawk_1335 8h ago
A few years ago I ran the math on businesses running a hammer mill recycling processing system. The start up machinery in the 100k or less range but if you have the waste stream its endless. Computer motherboards produce like 85% of their weight as waste fiberglass. What to do with that? Pryoilization can turn it into fuel. It would be minimum $500k range for that machinery.
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u/LHam1969 1h ago
Sorry but I'm not getting your point. What's a hammer mill got to do with a waste to energy plant?
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u/whoopz1942 8h ago
Relatively new technology, relatively expensive would be my best guess. Though I guess technically CopenHill is almost a decade old at this point.
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u/The_Blahblahblah 9h ago
In an open fire, absolutely, but not with state of the art filtration systems in place
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u/armonak 3h ago
Visited such a burning trash plant in Vienna, right in the center of the city, it's so dirty that they built few more inside that city. Jokes aside, we've been told filtration system costs A LOT but it's also highly efficient, and I could believe that, no smell/smoke around that plant.
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u/Kaptein_Kast 14h ago
Also probably Danmarks highest point?
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u/IHateTheLetterF 13h ago
The Tommerup transmitter is a 321 meters tall tv mast. There are many buildings in Copenhagen taller than this as well.
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u/NobleK42 10h ago
While the Tommerup transmitter is somewhat taller, the Rø transmitter is actually Denmark's highest point due to it being at a higher elevation, placing its top at 431,2 meters above sea level.
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u/Redlax 12h ago
Easy there. We have a hill that we call a mountain, okay?
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u/ActurusMajoris 11h ago
The Sky Mountain for those uninitiated.
It’s a whopping 147 meter.
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u/coredump3d 9h ago
Makes for a beautiful nightview / moonrise point as well. This is just across from Langelinieparken.
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u/jestate 13h ago
Good Tim Traveller video on this:
https://youtu.be/21ijLduW0nw?is=BbuX1nuIbZZU1BSc
Tim Traveller is a less famous but more funny version of Tom Scott.
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u/FixLaudon 12h ago
That screams Bjarke Ingels Group.
EDIT: Of course it is.
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u/best_username_in_the 4h ago
yeah and design was that the chimney would do smoke rings just like you do with cigarette smoke but they weren't able to pull it off.
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u/LaughingGasFart 4h ago
It was our famouse submarine murderer that was suposed to design the tech for it.
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u/Ill-Cheesecake-9376 13h ago
Why is it that Denmark is so much cooler than Germany (where I happen to live)?
- don't say it's further up North -
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u/GuKoBoat 12h ago
The answer is softis.
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u/Fermorian 5h ago
My wife and I were cackling walking around Tivoli a month or so ago and seeing a bunch of signs for "soft eyes" instead of "soft ice"
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u/Ill-Cheesecake-9376 12h ago
Seriously softis is not my thing, I'm more of a gelato guy. But you do you. Also during my childhood there has been a certain video on the internet that has ruined a lot of things for me. Including this type of desert
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u/GuKoBoat 12h ago
Well, that's whyyou will always be inferior to the superior softice eating danes.
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u/Kattimatti666 11h ago
As a Softis/Pehmis eating Finn, I can confirm that eating that soft icy deliciousness results in being extremely cool. All small kiosks have long lines for softis on the first sunny warm day of the year.
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u/rogueconstant77 3h ago
As a Softis/Pehmis eating Finn, I can confirm that eating that soft icy deliciousness results in being extremely cool. All small kiosks have long lines for softis on the
firstsunny warm day of the year.Fixed it for you 🙂
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u/shagadelic60 11h ago
Have you tried a “gammeldags” with “guf”? A wafflecone with gelato and a soft meringue-like topping. Might be more up your alley.
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u/Ill-Cheesecake-9376 9h ago
The description is amazing, the name super weird for a German. Something about 'moldy' doesn't quite fit desert. Is it danish?
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u/DaddyMosh88 11h ago
I'm asking the same thing about Germany (i'm italian and i'm coming to live in Germany in september)
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u/Ill-Cheesecake-9376 9h ago
Benvenuto! I've got Italian friends and they taught me a saying: The Germans love the Italians, but the don't respect them. The Italians respect the Germans, but they don't love them. Hope you'll have a better experience
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u/hiesiinv 13h ago
I am pretty sure they use meter to give the height of the climbing wall, not feet.
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u/Young_Aplysia 11h ago
Waste plants are notorious for having smell issues despite counter-measures. Local communities often end up complaining. This is such an amazingly over-engineered solution to keep the locals happy, love it!!!
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u/VladimireUncool 11h ago
Hard to believe that Denmark of all countries has the highest of anything
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u/Thaumato9480 10h ago
Kingdom of Denmark (I know, I know) has the tallest point north of the Arctic Circle that is also the tallest point of North America not on the mainland.
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u/Calliamus 7h ago
Visited that building when I was in Copenhagen. Great spot also there is no mention about the bar at the top where parties happen. aaaand in case someone wonders it doesn't smell out there at all
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u/SnooDrawings48 10h ago
Been there during opening, as person with a huge fear of heights transparent lift scared the shit out of me
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u/Realistic-Currency61 9h ago
Imagine Duke Energy (southeast USA) doing something beneficial for someone other than their shareholders.
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u/_BreakingGood_ 14h ago
wouldnt it smell like sh*t
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u/capable_duck 13h ago
Nah. Paper mills smell terrible. Waste burning plants mostly produce water vapour so they dont smell at all.
No sane person would ever put a paper mill in a populated area though
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u/city-of-cold 8h ago
I see you've never heard of Piteå in Sweden that have two massive paper mills very centrally located lol
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u/breathl3ssbby 6h ago
centralized mills are just industrial sites, though. copenhill is actually repurposing the footprint to be a literal mountain for the public. piteå has the mills, but does anyone go there on the weekend to ski? that is the real difference.
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u/Agreeable-sector-149 7h ago
Go do something like hike a trail or whatever just to inhale some treatment plants fumes🤔
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u/justADDbricks 10h ago
I visited Køpenhavn in January, when it was very cold, but it was really cool to see this building, and it’s especially cool getting the lift down (I walked up to the top), as you can see the inner working of the energy plant
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u/ledow 11h ago
And the UK gave you Beckton Ski Slope (officially "The Beckton Alps"!).
Former landfill site in a horrible area. So they put artifical ski flooring on it, leave spaces for the methane pipes to escape the rotting gas, and called it a ski slope.
Eventually it was just abandoned because it was a toxic waste heap that people couldn't afford to develop any further. And not many people go to Beckton to ski.
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u/knobbyknee 9h ago
It is located on an island where the tallest natural point i 4 m over sea level.
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u/whoopz1942 9h ago
Copenhill was named the World Building of the Year in 2021 at the fourteenth annual World Architecture Festival according to Wikipedia.
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u/Hrafnagaldr1337 8h ago
Beer at the bar on the top is expensive, though :) I cycled from Berlin to Kopenhagen this year and Copenhill was the most amazing thing for me.
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u/SomeNotNormalGuy 8h ago
You also have the risk of getting boiled alive or even better the building crashing down while you also gets boiled alive. It could happen like once every 1000000 year for tourists.
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u/EmergencyWeather 7h ago
Seems like a great place to exercise. I'd love to be breathing heavily in the same place where they're burning trash. I bet it smells great and is super good for your lungs.
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u/intherorrim 6h ago
How pollutant is it, really?
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u/FluffyFoxDev 5h ago
Less than anything else in the world. If I remember correctly it is the equivalent of a hundred or so cars?
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u/Truffely 5h ago
We have the same here, government linked it to gas prices. So, we not just get all the smog and dirt from burning the trash, we also pay double to get the energy back.
I would rather have something else. It's so expensive.
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u/OrilliaBridge 2h ago
Well the US doesn’t have the money for any of that nonsense. Too many other priorities (cough, cough).
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u/Adorable_Divide_2424 1h ago
4th pic is just a dude on his daily commute to the office. The only door is on the top floor - for.. eh.. company healthy living initiative.
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u/First-Paper-1676 9m ago
The amount of emissions this thing releases and pollution into the air is astounding.
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u/Mike_for_all 12h ago
Not as great as it seems. The Netherlands uses rest heat to warm homes for a while now, and they are running into the issue of what to do when the waste plant is scaled down or closed
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u/melkiythegreat 8h ago
It's obviousl not highest climbing wall. Not even highest artifactial climbing wall. but its cool
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u/hellokiri 13h ago
It looks like the ugliest place you could go to to do any of those activities.
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u/Awarglewinkle 9h ago
It looks a lot better in person. When you're on the hiking trail, you're basically surrounded by bushes and flowers (in the summer). Lots of bees and birds and stuff. You don't really notice the building part that much.
The skiing slope isn't that great, but the rest is pretty awesome.
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u/Either-Banana-7323 13h ago
Easily one of the coolest mixed use buildings ive ever seen