Walking on heaps of rubbish

Vuosaari landfill 11/9/2010

It was a misty day yesterday. The kids were enjoying the company of their grandparents so I persuaded my husband to take the eastbound metro to Vuosaari and walk with me to a former rubbish dump (isn't that what all parents do when the kids are away?). Since the mid-1990's there have been efforts to landscape the dump for everybody to enjoy. The work is still going on.

On the way to the top the scenery reminds you of the history of the place. You are being warned of the methane emissions on the site - no smoking or fire allowed here (luckily we had taken our tea in a thermos!). The methane is being processed in a natural gas power plant nearby.

This place is very weird. It is almost like a 60-metre-high mini fjell brought to southern Finland, and all the time you remember you are standing on top of a huge pile of rubbish and waste soil.

More or less everything has been brought here from somewhere else:

The ruins of a house? No, but stones placed to look like the ruins of a house.

A herd of cows? Yes, wooden ones.

Standing dead trees? Oh yes, but the trees never grew here.

An artificial canyon

But not everything is artificial and lifeless here. They say that the flora and fauna is very rich in the area. This landscaping project has even gained recognition for promoting biodiversity.

This walk was a quite surreal experience, and also an example of recycling. But I do hope that we humans learn how to produce less waste in the future as we cannot build too many artificial fjells.