Getliņi Landfill Has Space for About Eight More Years: Where Will Riga's Waste Go?
The Getliņi landfill, which takes waste from Riga and surrounding municipalities, has five hectares left, enough for roughly eight years. Expanding the site or building a waste-to-energy plant is under consideration, but both options raise concerns.
Space is running out at the Getliņi landfill, which handles waste from Riga, Latvia's capital, and its surrounding area. According to "360TV Ziņas", the site has five hectares left, enough for about eight years. A decision on the next step must be made fairly soon: either the landfill is expanded, or a recovery plant is built to burn waste and produce heat energy.
A mountain that keeps growing
Over sixty years, 12.5 million tonnes of waste have been dumped at Getliņi, forming a 55-metre-high mound. The waste decomposes and produces gas. Pipes are used to channel it away, but part of it still escapes into the atmosphere. This mound is now closed, while new waste continues to be dumped nearby, building another one.
More than 100,000 tonnes of waste are buried at the site every year, generated by residents of Riga and nine municipalities in the surrounding area. About two thousand people in Ropaži municipality live in the landfill's direct impact zone, within a one-kilometre radius.
Both options meet objections
About a month ago, the company "Getliņi EKO" sent a letter to the Ropaži municipality asking it to set aside additional land in its planning for a possible landfill expansion. Aivars Draudiņš, chairman of the Ropaži municipal council ("United List"), said that expansion is as bad as a recovery plant and that the choice is between two evils.
Edgars Butāns, a representative of "Getliņi EKO", stressed that the waste already at the site can be recovered and converted into energy, and that if the appropriate decisions are made in Latvia, the company is ready to hand it over.
Riga's deputy mayor Edvards Ratnieks (National Alliance) acknowledged that technically anything is possible, but said it should be assessed whether hauling waste so far is rational and whether other ways of using it exist. He noted that such processes are used in Tallinn and Vilnius to lower tariffs. Heating tariffs in Riga are very high, and a recovery plant could be one solution.
