*If all trash companies belong to the Mafia, then it shouldn’t be surprising that the Berlin Municipal Waste Management Company wants you to be part of “the family.” Through advertising and corporate strategy, consumers are deliberately enfranchised through advertising that is funny and frank. The latest reason for the family feeling, is a forthcoming 3.4MW biogas plant owned by BSR (Berliner Stadtreinigungsbetriebe – the Berlin Municipal Waste Management Company) and powered exclusively by household compost.
BSR has collected household compost since 1996. Today 83% of Berlin families participate in the weekly collection of organic household waste; a 30 gallon trash can of compost costs 31€ per quarter for weekly pick-up service. Fifty-two thousand tonnes of organic waste was collected in 2009 from Berlin households (which does not count restaurants or commercial organic waste).
The planned anaerobic biogas digester will run on household compost, which includes urban woody biomass trimmings, Christmas trees, and household organic matter like banana peels and flower bouquets.
The 3.4 MW plant, built on a brownfield site in Berlin, will accommodate 60,000 tonnes of compostable waste, and produce 4.12 million cubic meters of gas / yr. This biogas will then be upgraded to natural gas grade methane, fed into the natural gas grid, and ultimately used across town by BSR to power over 150 compressed natural gas vehicles. This efficiency will save the firm 66 million gallons (2.5M liters) of diesel fuel, and the 6,200 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. The biogas plant will provide 16 full time jobs.
The 3.4 MW plant, built on a brownfield site in Berlin, will accommodate 60,000 tonnes of compostable waste, and produce 4.12 million cubic meters of gas / yr. This biogas will then be upgraded to natural gas grade methane, fed into the natural gas grid, and ultimately used across town by BSR to power over 150 compressed natural gas vehicles. This efficiency will save the firm 66 million gallons (2.5M liters) of diesel fuel, and the 6,200 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. The biogas plant will provide 16 full time jobs.
BSR scientists say high quality organic waste from home compost bins exceeds other municipal sources, in terms of caloric content. The purer the input to a biogas digester, the more energy comes out. Therefore outreach to potential composting waste-clients is worth the marketing expense.
To advertise for the Compost campaign, BSR partnered with the Berlin City Gallery’s Oil Painting Collection. The resulting billboards edited fine oil paintings to spotlight the pieces of fruit or flowers within them; “Old flowers belong in the bio bin!” was a slogan draped across Hans Hohlbein des Jüngeren’s stunning work “Salesman Georg Gisze” painted in 1535.
To advertise for the Compost campaign, BSR partnered with the Berlin City Gallery’s Oil Painting Collection. The resulting billboards edited fine oil paintings to spotlight the pieces of fruit or flowers within them; “Old flowers belong in the bio bin!” was a slogan draped across Hans Hohlbein des Jüngeren’s stunning work “Salesman Georg Gisze” painted in 1535.
BSR’S award winning advertising campaign, pictured here, recently put the company’s own trash haulers as models. It features slogans like “We Kehr for you” where Kehr is a play on words between the German verb to “sweep clean” and the sound of the English verb “Care.” A consciousness of responsibility is BSR’s vision for their marketing, and helps explain the high percentage of customers who separate out their compost.
To BSR’S 5,000 employees, their firm is an environmental company, not a waste management firm. Since the caloric value of refuse is roughly equal to that of brown coal, the firm’s 700 MW power plant in a Berlin neighborhood provides garbage-fueled electricity and heat through Combined Heat Power system to the city. Electricity is supplied to 63,000 households and 31,000 households receive heat from this plant. Further, BSR captures and deploys 40M cubic meters of methane from company-operated landfills, offers the full suite of recycling options, runs its operations in energy efficient buildings, and drives its trash collection vehicle fleet with lower carbon fuel sources. BSR serves 3.4M citizens in an 890 Km2 region.
According to Dr. Thomas Klöckner, of BSR’s Public Relations, “You can do good things, and you can talk about them, but only in that order,” referencing the firm’s commitment to implement respectable environmental practices, before boasting in their environmentally themed marketing. Public tours of the recycling center and waste-to-energy facility educated 1,700 people during 2009.
In every city, the waste management plan is specific to the waste stream and local conditions. As of 2005, no more waste in Germany may be landfilled, thus providing incentive for waste diversion, energetic use of the trash, and management of multiple waste streams. For BSR, the climate protection potential of the waste management sector is an opportunity they will seize.
* Translation from the German into English: Good for your Circulation!In the green dot: Through converting your bulky household waste into energy, we are saving 45,000 tonnes of Coal
The most common biogas plants used in developing countries are small household based fixed dome models. They are cheap to build and can be constructed by using materials available locally.
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