Environment

A2A excellence 

Amongst A2A’s the many areas of excellence and leadership, it also manages waste and its transformation into energy (a sector in which A2A takes second place behind the Bologna-based company, Hera, as far as regards treatment, but takes first place in Italy for the production of energy – waste-to-energy – with approximately 1,120 Gigawatt).
This is an important business activity and it has an important future based on an extraordinary industrial reality, in that A2A has integrated waste disposal and waste-to-energy plants of Amsa in Milan and Ecodeco. 

AMSA Milan

AMSA, whose merger with AEM was signed on 24 December 2007, stands for Azienda Milanese Servizi Ambientali. It manages waste collection in area with more than 2 million residents and owns some of the most innovative plants in Italy.
Disposing of your own waste has the twofold advantage of reducing the costs of the service and ensures that waste disposal is not dependent upon the availability of third party plants to accept waste, or the market forces imposed by them in this sector.
Moreover, the fact that the plants were designed, built and managed are directly available offers greater guarantees – given Amsa’s direct responsibility – in terms of operative and economic control, in addition to minimising environmental impact in all areas. This has been made possible thanks also to voluntary application of the Environmental Management System ISO 14001 Standard.
From this perspective, and in the context of a close multi-year programme and planning which serves the aim of becoming self-sufficient in waste disposal, to date the following plants have been constructed:

• the Silla 2 waste-to-energy plant;
• the glass recycling plant in Muggiano;
• the fluorescent lamps treatment plant in Muggiano;
• the purification plant in Olgettina;
• the environmental recovery plants in the former waste dumps site at Gerenzano;
• the Maserati Light selection and compacting plant

APRICA SPA

Aprica SpA is responsible for the collection and disposal of waste over a large area that includes the provinces of Brescia, Bergamo and Mantova.

• in Brescia, the service covers the whole territory with waste collection skips and other skips for various types of waste, taking great care to ensure that waste is separated prior to collection (in 2006 it stood at 42%, and the aim is to achieve 50%).Solid urban waste that cannot be usefully recycled received by the Brescia waste-to-heat plant is recovered to create energy. After combustion, the remaineder (which is equivalent to at least 10% of its original volume) is disposed of at the A2A dump in Montichiari. After being gradually filled, all the dumps were equipped with electricity generator groups after their closure, which are powered by biogas recovered from the dumps themselves.
• In Bergamo, separate collection is carried out either “door-to-door” or using skips positioned at the roadside. A storage plant for materials recovered from separate waste collection supports the logistics which means that each specific suburb is directed towards specialised centres for recovery and waste disposal. Moreover, a plant has been built in Bergamo with the potential to take approximately 60,000 tonnes/year for pre-treatment of waste that is subsequently used in the energy recovery plant.  

ECODECO

Giuseppe Natta (son of Nobel prize-winner Giulio Natta) had the foresight to set up Ecodeco, which is A2A’s crowning achievement. Thanks to the use of exclusive technology, Ecodeco transforms waste (in other words, everything that remains after separate waste collection) into solid fuel to produce energy and heat.
The company generates a turnover of Euro 170 million and has plants in Italy, Great Britain and Spain, in addition to many other projects under way throughout the world.