News / Burning garbage: the greenest option?
INCINERATION may be the most environmentally friendly solution for Shetland to deal with recyclable waste materials such as paper and plastic in the short term, according to a draft study by Zero Waste Scotland.
The waste-to-energy plant at Gremista burns waste material from Shetland, Orkney and occasionally the Highlands. Its output then powers SHEAP’s district heating scheme for homes in Lerwick.
But because Shetland is not connected to the national grid, SHEAP has to make up any shortfall in energy using power generated by oil-fired plants.
That has led Zero Waste to conclude that burning would actually be a greener measure than recycling, at least temporarily, for some types of garbage.
In recent years the council has abandoned kerbside collection of recycled material in Lerwick and Scalloway, leaving householders to take plastic, glass, newspapers and cans to collection points instead.
Shetland Islands Council’s infrastructure director Maggie Sandison said Zero Waste’s draft report suggested the “best environmental option” for paper, card and plastic would be incineration.
Glass would still be recycled by the Cunningsburgh-based Enviroglass project into various products including glass paving. Metal would also continue to be recycled.
Late last year the recycling of newspapers was halted entirely. Daily journals were previously converted into animal bedding for use by crofters, and Sandison said discussions had begun with social enterprise COPE and other organisations including Northmavine Development Company about whether the collection could be run without the council’s involvement.
Sandison hopes the Zero Waste study will be completed in the next few weeks, and its findings will be put before councillors later in the year.
If the report does ultimately recommend burning – rather than recycling – certain waste materials, she feels it would only be a short term answer.
A number of factors could swing the environmental balance back in favour of recycling:
- Importing more waste from other councils would reduce the need to use recyclable materials to keep the district heating scheme supplied;
- If local green energy solutions, such as the NINES scheme or small scale wind turbines, came to fruition that would offer SHEAP a cleaner alternative source of energy than an oil-fuelled power plant;
- Further down the road, an interconnector cable hooking Shetland up to the National Grid would also change the picture.
“In the longer term what they [Zero Waste] would like us to do is find alternative sources for energy,” Sandison explained, “and then at that point recycling becomes the better environmental option.”
The use of the waste-to-heat plant has seen Shetland languish around the bottom of the league table of Scottish local authority recycling rates for many years.
Sandison said the SIC was seeking a derogation allowing it to burn domestic waste because of Shetland’s special circumstances, and she is confident that will be granted.
“Because of our situation in Shetland, that we’re not on the grid, they’re prepared to accept something different for us, but only for a period of time until the circumstances change.
“We’re not expected to stand still – we’re expected to go out and start looking at options to import waste, to recycle.”
The local authority has an arrangement with Highland Council where it buys in additional waste in times of a shortage of material for the Gremista plant, such as when there are no collections over Christmas.
But, although it needs to find more material to feed the incinerator, Sandison stressed that the SIC still wants to encourage businesses and households to reduce the amount of waste they produce.
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