Communities Against Toxics Scotland (CATsScotland): April 2008 Update

Update by Jeni Mackay Scottish Campaigns coordinator. CATs Scotland is currently working on the Waste framework Directive (WFD), IPPC and supporting Community groups facing efw developments in their areas.

Current incinerators/technology
• Dundee, DERL, Baldovie Incinerator- currently there is an issue of whether the technology is meeting the efficiency levels.
• Shetland – CHP technology, there seems to be nothing wrong with the Shetland Incinerator.
• Dumfries and Galloway – RDF
We are looking into the efficiencies of existing efw and monitoring.

Proposed treatment facilities
• Dunbar, Viridor, PPC application withdrawn for the 450,000t facility for down scaling. We provided information and support to the local group fighting this
• Perth, Bin Farm, SITA, just about to hit the PPC application process. SEPA and the government have rejected permission to this incinerator and it still got planning permission to go ahead.
• Highland, – Mainland – they were considering Lochaber at one point but they may have changed this, the current proposal is for a 130,000t facility
- Islands – Portree
• N Lanarkshire

Other Local authorities will be putting more proposals forward. We are campaigning against the proposals that come forward with the groups in the local areas and lobbying the government.

On 24th January the new Scottish Government announced their waste proposals.
• Scotland is designated as ‘on the road to Zero Waste’
• 70% recycling by 2025
• 25% EFW – only small CHP under 100,000 and has to be super efficient.
• Set up a Zero waste think tank which the government decides who sits on this – so far its sepa, CRNS, wrap…more information is yet to come out about this but the first meeting took place in early April.
• A commitment to WP? they may look at targets for this. There is a 2 year old action plan but there is no investment in pushing this! Which is ironic being the centre of the ZW

More areas will be coming forward with new proposals since the waste statement.

Before the statement on the 24th January LA’s had submitted business proposals for the ways they were going to deal with waste with new facilities. This is now not going ahead due to the new conditions and all the proposals before the 24th Jan are non existent, but there were proposals for 10 incinerators and the government had made room for 17 incinerators in total. So the statement is a minor improvement to this.

We had lobbied the government over all the issues but gained some success when Richard Lochhead had received over 70 letters from all over the world, within 12 hrs before he made his speech. SEPA is also reviewing the Thermal treatment guidelines – no consultation process as such for the review, but they have asked me into a meeting to discuss and are sending me the papers for comments.

I am a member of GAIA and we care currently setting up an EU network, and I am on the strategy committee, responsible for setting up the network with a few others. There will be an invitation sent out for groups to join this soon. I am also nominated for the International Steering committee and I sit on the zero waste and the waste and climate change working groups. I am the Scottish director for ZWAUK which has just received charity status and I cover the Scottish side of things. We are now working on a strategy for the work the alliance will do. Other areas related that CATs Scotland is working on that has a cross over with waste is nanotechnology and chemicals. I am also a member of ZWIA and as GAIA will be attending the ZWIA meeting in Florence at the end of April.

Interesting developments – One of the issues which helped to prevent the Dunbar incinerator from going ahead was the issue of nano particles. SEPA have called an urgent meeting to discuss this, they have never dealt with it in Incineration only in air quality monitoring in main streets with loads of traffic. I am being informed about the discussions at the meeting after it happens but they wouldn’t let me attend because it was a private internal meeting.