Amager Bakke, a waste-to-energy plant that replaced an old coal incineration plant, near Copenhagen, Denmark, produces enough electricity to power at least 60,000 homes and heat 72,000. Advanced filtration technology reduces emissions of noxious nitrogen oxides to almost zero.

A grab crane dumps waste into a silo in the collection chamber at the Amager Bakke waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen, Denmark. The plant burns waste at a rate of 70 tonnes per hour to generate electricity. 

The dry desert climate in Arizona, USA, helps prevent corrosion and weather damage to aircraft stored at the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group in Tucson. ‘The Boneyard’ handles nearly 4,400 decommissioned planes, dismantling them and reusing parts, or reassembling entire aircraft to be put back into service.

Clouds rise from geothermal wells in Hellisheiði Power Station in Hengill, Iceland. Approximately 87% of hot water for households and heating city streets in Iceland comes from geothermal energy. Hellisheiði’s pipes are painted green to minimize the visual impact on the landscape.

Workers inspect pipes at the Novo Nordisk insulin production facility in Kalundborg, Denmark. The factory produces half of the world's insulin in a process that generates tons of yeast slurry as a byproduct. The slurry is then used to make agricultural fertilisers and to produce biomass energy to power the Kalundborg Symbiosis industrial park, a partnership between nine companies in which residue from one becomes a resource at another.

A vertical farming facility in Newark, New Jersey, USA, produces fresh vegetables in a way that uses 5% of the water normally needed in an outdoor field. Seeds are laid on fabric made from 100% recycled plastic bottles and misted from below, in a closed system that requires no pesticides and allows nutrients to be spot-delivered.

Newly recycled wool fibre dries in a textile facility in Prato, Italy. A wet shredding technique is used to strip the wool and turn rags back into fibre that can then be spun into thread to produce fine fabrics. Discarded clothing is a source of pollution worldwide. Prato has long  been a model of innovation in the textile sector, having historically based its industrial fortune on the reuse of second-hand clothing from all over the world.

A worker at Entocycle, a company developing technology to farm insects on a large scale for industrial protein production as a more sustainable alternative to meat, checks flies in an experimental net chamber in London, UK. She wears a mask as the floor is covered in rotting waste material to incite the flies to lay eggs.

Staff check the algae bioreactor at a pilot plant at CLEARAS Water Recovery headquarters in Missoula, Montana, USA. The plant cleans wastewater by using algae to filter out nitrogen, phosphorus and other chemicals. The resulting algae biomass is recycled for further use, such as in bioplastic shoe soles.

Geothermal energy warms this greenhouse in the lava fields of Grindavik, Iceland. Barley grown in inert volcanic pumice is genetically engineered to produce Epidermal Growth Factor (EGF), a protein that stimulates cell growth and which is used in luxury cosmetics. EGF has a market value of US$10,000 a gram.

Environment,2nd Prize

Fading Flamingos