The Kick-Off of the CITISYSTEM project in Lahti, Finland
The kick-off meeting of the CITISYSTEM – Supporting cities in sustainable biobased systemic change – project took place in Lahti, Finland on 9-10. May 2023. The meeting gathered around 20 project partners, their stakeholders, and expert speakers from six countries. The CITISYSTEM partnership consists of seven partners from Finland (2 partners), Slovakia, Slovenia, Belgium, Greece, and Spain. There are two partners in Finland, LAB University of Applied Sciences, who acts as a lead partner, and the City of Lahti. (Interreg Europe 2023.)
CITISYSTEM promotes bio circular economy and focuses on the circulation of materials, nutrients, and energy flows in the urban environment. The project aims to improve respective policies to stimulate utilisation, circulation, and recovery of biobased resources and to foster a systemic change on the city-level. For that, a number of learning activities and exchanges of experience on both regional and interregional (among EU regions) levels involving project partners and stakeholders will take place.
Showcasing Lahti expertise
The 1st CITISYSTEM meeting started by site visits and expert presentations. The first stop was at the Kujala Waste Cente, Lahti. The group received a comprehensive presentation of Salpakierto’s waste treatment facilities, collection, processing and utilisation system with a focus on biobased materials, such as biowaste, wastewater sludge, soil, garden waste, and waste wood.
The waste management company started its operations already in 1993 with the separate biowaste collection since 1995. Since 2005, the composting plant was in use and the Labio biogas plant since 2014. As Kimmo Rinne, Development Manager at Salpakierto, pointed out, according to the new waste legislation, all properties in urban areas with a population over 10 000 must separate biowaste. (Rinne 2023.)
After that, the presentation of Labio, an integrated biogas and composting plant was given, followed by a site-visit. According to Niko Wassholm, Chief Executive Officer at Labio, the plant has operated for 18 years while handling over 1 000 000 tons of waste with no shutdowns. In terms of production capacity, Labio is the second largest producer of upgraded biogas in the country. The biogas plant uses dry fermentation anaerobic digestion in four digester units. The integrated composting plant consists of 11 tunnels and uses natural aerobic processes with heat recovery. (Wassholm 2023.)
Elina Ojala, Environmental director at City of Lahti, presented the story of Lahti becoming the smallest and northernmost European Green Capital 2021. Lahti’s environmental journey has a long history started back in the late 1980s. Lahti aims to become carbon-neutral by 2025 by cutting the emissions by 80% from 1990 level and the rest to be compensated with local carbon sinks and offsetting. Ojala pointed out the importance of citizen engagement as well as environmental education starting already in kindergartens. (Ojala 2023.)
Finally, Mikko Väisänen, Project Manager at Lahti Energia, presented the case of Ali-Juhakkala. There, the energy company installed seven heat pumps to utilize up to 5 MW heat capacity from wastewaters. As a result, the achieved reduction of natural gas consumption of 9,3 GWh/a led into CO2 emissions decrease of 1700 t/a. (Väisänen 2023.)
Author:
Katerina Medkova works as an RDI Specialist at LAB University of Applied Sciences and is CITISYSTEM Project Manager.
The article was originally published in LAB Focus on 9.6.2023, https://blogit.lab.fi/labfocus/en/lahti-presents-its-bio-circular-economy-know-how-to-international-guests/