World Wisdom: Minneapolis' HERC

When the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center (HERC) trash incinerator was first built in Minneapolis’ ‘North Loop’ neighborhood, critics were concerned that the northern side of the city would be under a constant cloud, and more significantly, they were worried about the smell.

“They said it’d be so bad we’d literally be killing people.”

Flash forward 25 years, and the North Loop smells just fine. It has become Minneapolis’ most trendy neighborhood, and as for HERC itself, it’s “almost entirely innocuous.”

 

HERC is eliminating the need for landfills, and providing power to the city, while producing “next to no emissions.”

 

Read more about the plant that is leading Minneapolis’ charge to be carbon-neutral by 2030 in “Minneapolis Gets Trashed” by Caleb Hannan in the latest edition of POLITICO Magazine’s ‘What Works’ series.