Gibson challenges Highland council over waste policy

News release
Immediate release
14/08/09

Easter Ross based SNP MSP Rob Gibson has challenged Highland Council administration to come clean over its waste policy.

His challenge comes in the run up to a meeting next week that will accept or reject a private waste incinerator plant in Invergordon.

The plant which has attracted local opposition (including a two thousand name petition against the development) has been recommended for approval by council officials.

Mr Gibson says that it is time that the Highland Council came clean over their waste policy.

"The Invergordon decision will go some way to telling us where the future of waste strategy of Highland Council is headed. If it is given the go-ahead then the Highlands could become the dumping ground for the rest of Scotland's rubbish. The insistence by the Council that part of the port of Invergordon is given over to holding waste suggests that the waste needed to power the plant is going to be shipped in. What is not stated is where this waste is going to come from. Send us your plastic and rotting rubbish is hardly a call which I would like to hear but it could happen."

"Indeed the CO2 emissions that such a plant would emit raises serious questions which need to be answered. I believe that in order to produce the heat required to make the plant viable the owners would have to burn a lot of plastic. In any era, let alone the climate change era, burning plastic is less and less likely. There is no point in having a world leading Climate Change Bill as was agreed by the Scottish Parliament this summer which commits the nation to deep cuts in Co2 output only to have incinerators popping up all over the North and West requiring the production of waste for incineration from across the Highlands."

"It is time for the Highland Council it's administration and officials to say which waste strategy it backs. Is it a commitment to reducing waste and recycling or is it to sanction large build incinerators throughout the area (as is proposed) which will encourage and increase of waste and may see the area becoming a dumping ground whilst actually margainalising the renewable energy and recycling sector. Additionally very careful assessment of the carbon footprint of such a plant must be available publicly. Also sums for damage to the environment must be revealed in this questionable Highland Council waste 'strategy'."

ENDS