WHILE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of pedestrians walk across Berlin’s chic glass-and-steel Potsdamer Platz every day, few realize that fifty feet below them lies a vast subterranean warren for recycling and waste management. A private company called ALBA Facility Solutions processes 2,866 U.S. tons of waste here a year. Though this is a modest feat among the 2,400 similar centers across Europe—the newest of which move more than 20 times that volume—it is noteworthy for its hideaway location under the center of a major metropolis. While the city and its inhabitants move through their days, the organic waste from the city’s eateries and cafes is funneled to heatgenerating biogas plants. Meanwhile, other “waste” is sorted into dozens of categories, such as plastic, metal, paper, and glass, that are then sent to treatment sites or incinerated for energy.
Facilities like the ALBA center have been popping up across Europe and around the world for years, with each generation becoming larger and more automated. The European Union hopes that once they reach full industrial scale, they will be a cornerstone of Europe’s circular economy: a regenerative economic system in which products and their components are used and reused indefinitely. In this system, “waste”—or “resources” as they are called here—is returned into the product cycle through recycling, repair, redesign, and reuse. This circular economy is a “closed loop,” in which as little material as possible lands in a garbage heap.