The amount of household waste being transported from Rome to Amsterdam to be incinerated is doubling from the end of this month, from 900 to 1.800 tons a week.
A few weeks ago news broke that the cities of Rome and Amsterdam had signed a deal for the Dutch capital to burn 900 tons of household waste from the Italian city every week. The deal was made because Rome currently doesn’t have the capacity it needs in order to process and dispose of all the household waste it produces.
While Amsterdam’s move to go ahead with the deal has been met with some criticism, at the time the Waste Energy Company (AEB) - the company responsible for processing and incinerating the waste - said it was fairly commonplace: “like most waste incinerators in the Netherlands, AEB has been processing waste from abroad for many years.”
In spite of the backlash and reports that the deal would negatively impact air quality in the Dutch capital, the AD has since reported that, from the end of May, the amount of rubbish transported from Rome to Amsterdam every week will double to 1.800 tons. The newspaper also reports that, although the transfer was due to start at the beginning of May, construction work on the train track means no trains have reached Amsterdam yet.
“Since the beginning of April, a train full of Roman household waste should travel to the Netherlands every week to be processed here,” the AD writes. “Although the train is not yet running due to work on the track, it should be two trains from the end of May.” In return for their work, AEB is paid 200 euros per ton of rubbish, or “about 1,5 million euros per month.”
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