The Lion's Pride Lion's Pride Volume 12 (Spring 2019) | Page 67

Copenhagen, Denmark. One of the biggest problems for Copenhageners
was how to deal with waste from 590,000 residents. As Ingels (2016)
said, “Any problem is an opportunity. In a way, pollution is an abundant
resource that hasn’t found its true use yet” (p. 628). What he did to solve
the problem was turning the household waste into heat and energy
effectively. In other words, he wanted to create a new power plant that
converts a large amount of household waste into heat and electricity for
150,000 households. In addition, to minimize transportation time and
transmission loss, the power plant needed to be moved into the middle of
the city. According to Ingels’ research (2016), “One ton of trash has the
same energy content as 1 and 2/3 of an oil barrel. Moreover, 6lbs of
kitchen garbage turns into 5 hours of heating and 4 hours of electricity”
(p. 630). He also had a vision that the new power plant had to be the
cleanest waste-to-energy plant in the world. Since the new power plant
was going to be in the core of the city, they had to consider the effect of
pollution, such as dirt, smoke, and toxins. Ingels came up with an idea to
create a non-toxic smoke ring from the chimney, but the greatest
challenge for his team was to design a chimney that could create the
smoke ring.
In addition, it is a fact that Copenhagen has a cold climate, with
several months of snow but no mountains. Many local skiers have to
travel several hours by car to go skiing in Sweden. Therefore, Ingels
created an alpine ski slope, which has the same length as an Olympic