Still time to have your say on Longman Materials Recovery Facility

Following a pre-planning drop-in session at the end of September, The Highland Council has given the public a further 28 days to share their views and comment on the proposal for a new Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) at the Longman landfill site in Inverness.

The public can now visit the Council’s website to find out more about the MRF and to share their views on the proposal. (https://www.highland.gov.uk/longmanwmrf)

The MRF - a waste management facility - would be designed to process mixed residual waste and recover valuable materials such as plastics and metals for recycling. It would also produce refuse derived fuel which would be sorted and sent to Energy-from-Waste facilities elsewhere.

An implementation team have been preparing an external design of the facility and will be preparing for the submission of a planning application, later in 2018.

With the Landfill Ban coming into place in January 2021, the Council has to change the way it deals with waste. This will mean that like all other councils, it will not be allowed to landfill biodegradable municipal waste and a large proportion of waste that can be reused or recycled will no longer lie festering in the ground producing methane, a harmful greenhouse gas.

At the moment, thousands of tonnes of waste are produced in Highland every year, a large proportion of which currently ends up in landfill. The vast majority of this waste is from households.

The Council handles some 140,000 tonnes or waste per annum, and around 57,000 tonnes of this material is currently re-used, recycled or recovered from kerbside collections from households and businesses, as well as from Recycling Centres and Points.

However, around 83,000 tonnes of biodegradable municipal waste is still sent to landfill at a cost of approximately £11 million a year.