Nordic Waste: Denmark’s Search for the Guilty One That Must Not Be Found
In December 2023, record rainfall over Denmark contributed to a 75-meter-high pile of waste consisting of 3 million cubic meters of contaminated soil sliding towards Randers Fjord and still moving until mid-January 2024.
Nordic Waste, the operator of the recycling plant, initially tinkered with the solution for nine days (Euronews Green/AP 2024) before the relevant authorities got involved and resolved the problem (Petley 2024; Kirkebaek-Johansson 2024).
The Danish Environmental Protection Agency then ordered Nordic Waste to pay a deposit of 200 million Danish kroner (17.7 million euros), whereupon the company immediately filed for bankruptcy (Euronews Green/AP 2024).
According to Nordic Waste, climate change was to blame for the disaster. However, it has since been independently proven by various sources that Nordic Waste was responsible because, despite the persistent rainfall, they continued to pile up soil in an unsuitable place to form a pile, which then began to slide (Euronews Green/AP 2024; Petley 2024).
The managing director of Nordic Waste justified the decision (to file for bankruptcy) with the scale of the disaster, which would take five years and cost several billion kroner to clean up.
The Danish government then appealed to the conscience of Nordic Wastes' billionaire owner, who is the sixth richest man in Denmark. He should pay for the damage because of his “moral obligation”. (Euronews Green / AP 2024).
What stratagem was used?
(In my opinion, the) number 26: “Pointing at the mulberry tree while scolding the acacia tree”. Substitutes are pushed to the fore as scapegoats because the real culprit cannot be named (Senger 2004: 399-439).
The common goal of all those involved is the Danish public. The aim is to distract it from the fact that the Danish authorities will have to pay for the damage anyway because they allowed Nordic Waste to operate with an insurance policy whose maximum cover had long since been exceeded. Who's to blame for this doesn't matter - presumably Nordic Waste, Randers Municipality and the Danish Ministry of Environment together (H?berg 2024).
And therefore it's also unimportant whether Nordic Waste is to blame for the ?lster landslide or not. The fact that Denmark's government appealed to Torben ?stergaard's conscience instead to the courts (Euronews 2024; Euronews Green/AP 2024) is no coincidence: Nordic Waste's insurance seems to have been already overburdened with the two hundred million kroner; not filing for bankruptcy under these circumstances could possibly have been seen as a violation of Danish accounting law (H?berg 2024).
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Unsurprisingly, billionaire Torben ?stergaard-Nielsen decided against the government's proposal and set up a 100 million kroner climate fund instead, which promises him better press and tax benefits (Unbekannter Autor 19.01.2024).
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