Giants, dragons and towers!

Did you know that there’s a dragon in Tallinn?

You can find it in Nõmme, the “village within the city,” where I joined Ambassador Levine for a tour with District Elder Erki Korp on Monday. Nõmme is one of the eight administrative districts of Tallinn, located at the south-western edge of the city. Although it is located in Estonia’s largest city, Nõmme feels far removed from the high rise metropolis and is known for its small town ambiance. And we definitely got a taste of this on our visit!

Our small group started our tour at the district offices, where we met the administrative staff and quickly moved on to the grounds of Nikolai von Glehn’s stone castle. Von Glehn was a Tsarist-era Baltic-German landowner whose Gaudi-like, eccentric style has left its mark. During his time in Nõmme, he built a fanciful castle, observatory tower and several larger than life statues, including a dragon and a towering colossus of the Estonian epic character Kalevipoeg. Most of these were damaged or demolished during war times, but they have been faithfully rebuilt since then. In fact the castle is now owned by the capital’s own Tallinn University of Technology, whose male chorus raised funds to rebuild and restore it to its former glory.

Von Glehn's Castle

Kalevipoeg

I really enjoyed my visit to Nõmme and learning about its history and architecture. It was especially interesting to learn that, though von Glehn left Nõmme in 1918, his descendants, most of whom now live in Brazil, are still in touch with the town and that many of them planned to visit this very week! I hope they enjoy seeing not only all that their ancestor accomplished during his lifetime, but also what a pleasant, prosperous and green place Nõmme has become.

Burning garbage is one way to go green? No way!

Yesterday, I got yet another amazing opportunity to leave the office and learn something completely new. The Ambassador and I embarked on a trip to Iru Power Plant to tour the brand new Waste to Energy facility, which is in its first year of operation. This addition to the plant incinerates about 220,000 tons of Estonian waste annually, eliminating the need for landfills and providing all of Tallinn and the neighboring Maarda municipality with thermal energy.

Now, I have traveled to parts of the world on numerous occasions where I have seen my fair share of trash on fire, but nothing would prepare me for the scope of the operations here, especially the fact that it is environmentally friendly.

About 80 garbage trucks arrive at the Iru facility daily, bringing with them 700 tons of garbage. The trucks go through radiation detection and a weight bridge before dumping the garbage in the tipping hall. From there, the trash is moved to the waste bunker where it is picked up by cranes, a large scale version of a claw machine but instead of grabbing a toy, these engineers are grabbing a ton of trash and depositing it into the boiler. In the boiler, the trash is heated to 1200 degrees Celsius. The plant can incinerate 27.5 tons of trash per hour. The heat released from waste combustion produces overheated steam which is then guided to a steam turbine to produce electricity. The leftover heat is guided to the district heating network through heat exchanges. After this, the flue gases are cleaned using a semi-dry cleaning process and an environmental impact assessment has shown that the WtE unit to have no impact on the pollution level in the vicinity of the power plant.

After walking through this huge factory and seeing some really interesting sites (like 20 tons of garbage on fire!), we walked to the chimney. The chimney is a 200m tall tower which stores energy, and the day was sunny and perfect so we got a chance to hop in the Willy Wonka style elevator and ride to the top! We saw amazing views of Tallinn and learned about the 60m cooling tower we saw below us, though it looked tiny from our vantage point.

This new addition to the plant completely changes the waste management system in Estonia, as there is no longer a need to put trash into landfills; instead it is being used to provide people with heat and electricity. There are some metals that don’t burn, and those are also reused as they get sold off to a company that deals in scrap metal. Estonia produces about 500,000 tons of waste annually, but after half of that gets sorted for recycling, the Iru power plant deals with the leftover miscellaneous garbage.

After a great afternoon in the factory, I can conclude that the Iru Waste to Energy unit is a new solution for Estonia, both in terms of energy production and waste handling, as well as being an important environmental project. It is great to see the people of Estonia exploring alternative energy sources so they can save precious nonrenewable resources.

Post and photos by Public Affairs Intern Aalia Udawala