Copenhagen's Amager incinerator produces just five grammes of cancer-causing dioxins per year, according to its director, Mr Henning Jacobsen. "We get more complaints about noise than pollution."
Asked why there was no real controversy about incineration, Mr Jacobsen said people were "used to it" after 25 years and they also had confidence in the authorities. "The NIMBY [Not In My Back Yard] effect is much stronger for dumps and even recycling stations," he noted.
"Twenty-five years ago, we put in garbage and out came slack. As long as it looked clean, it was considered clean. But that's not the case today. The environmental controls here are monitored constantly and we have reduced our emissions by factors of between 10 and 100".
This applies, in particular, to hydrochloric acid and sulphur dioxide emissions. These are now "way below maximum limits" as a result of substantial investment over the years in flue-gas cleaning systems at the plant, which operates virtually round-the-clock.
Refuse trucks tip garbage into a huge pit from where it is lifted, in five-tonne batches, by cranes and fed into the incinerator. It is burned in a rotary kiln at 850C - the view through a small window is like a vision of hell - and the residue is landfilled. Mr Jacobsen estimates that the Amager plant would cost 1.2 billion Danish kroner (£120 million) to build today. This is comparable with the "waste to energy" project being planned for an ESB-owned site at Goddamendy, north of Blanchardstown, Co Dublin.