Covanta In Arlington Completes Environmental Upgrade

News Release From City Of Arlington:

ARLINGTON, VA — Covanta, a leader in sustainable materials management and a premier provider of environmental solutions for businesses and communities, announced that the Covanta Alexandria Waste-to-Energy facility recently completed planned enhancements to its state-of-the-art pollution control technology. The goal is to further reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, thereby helping to protect the environment.

The Alexandria based Waste-to-Energy facility serves 400,000 residents and businesses in the City of Alexandria and Arlington County. It provides reliable and sustainable waste management by combusting non-hazardous household waste at high temperatures, which then generates steam for renewable electricity production. In this way, Covanta processes and converts more than 350,000 tons of waste that would otherwise end up in landfills into energy.

“The installation of this new NOx technology will even further reduce the emissions and improve air quality,” said Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson. “This is an important effort to support the City of Alexandria in reaching our Environmental Action Plan 2040 goals.”

With installation of Covanta’s proprietary Low NOx (LN) technology now complete, nitrogen oxide emissions have been reduced by nearly 50%. The effort was part of a multi-year project at the Covanta Alexandria-Arlington facility. By reducing the waste put in landfills, Covanta Alexandria has cut greenhouse gas emissions by 331,000 tons of carbon dioxide. That’s the same as taking 65,000 passenger vehicles off the road for one year.

“Covanta is proud to manage our services and facilities in a way that prioritizes our communities, our businesses and our planet,” said Covanta area asset manager Don Cammarata. “Today marks an important step in our work with the community to reduce our environmental impact and improve air quality.”

The Low NOx technology is unique within the industry and demonstrates Covanta’s dedication to investment in research and development to provide superior environmental performance.

“Our ongoing partnership with Covanta is important to Arlington and we applaud their efforts to reduce NOx emissions to help lessen our impact on the environment,” said Katie Cristol, Arlington County Board Chair. “Converting waste that would typically end up in landfills to energy makes our community more sustainable.”

The facility also recovers 11,200 tons of metal annually and produces enough energy to power 15,000 homes 24 hours a day, seven days a week for a year.