WASTE MANAGEMENT

4.20 The North East generates one of the highest amounts of waste per head of population in Scotland and most of it is disposed in landfill sites. A different approach to waste is now being promoted in the National Waste Strategy and the emerging Area Waste Plan for North East Scotland. Waste should be recognised as a potentially useful resource that can be re-used, recycled or recovered in other ways and not simply viewed as the by-product of various processes that has to be thrown away.

4.21 For various environmental, economic and legislative reasons, landfill will cease to be the dominant means of waste management as it has been in the past. Greater emphasis will be placed on alternative means of management that treat waste further up the waste hierarchy. Consequently, more treatment facilities such as recycling, composting and energy from waste plants will be required in future. Most of these facilities raise their own environmental and amenity issues for consideration.

4.22 The development of alternatives to landfill will take some time to implement. It is therefore necessary to identify short-term landfill and land raise options that will meet the needs of the North East as well as more sustainable alternatives. The structure plan therefore identifies areas of search for landfill and land raise facilities based on a tiered approach to planning designations outlined in Policy 26 and Table 5. These exclude tiers 1 and 2.

4.23 Waste should also be managed according to the ‘Best Practicable Environmental Option’ (BPEO) and in accordance with the waste hierarchy. To be more sustainable, waste should increasingly be managed towards the first of these options:

4.24 In addition, at a local level there is a need to:

4.25 Tiers are used to guide landfill and land raise proposals and should be used to develop areas of search for such facilities. It is not always practical to apply tiers to all waste management proposals as each type of facility often requires different locational criteria. However, the tiers may be used to guide other facilities where appropriate, particularly in more remote rural areas where there are no suitable sites within existing settlements.

4.26 In general, facilities such as transfer stations, material reclamation facilities and recycling centres are best located in an industrial setting, where available. The co-location of such facilities should be encouraged wherever possible, together with the co-location of related waste management industries that are capable of utilising each other’s waste. This would cater for a number of mutually beneficial industries and processes, which together could create an integrated centre for waste management. This approach would also result in reduced transportation requirements.

4.27 Energy from Waste (EFW) plants can take many different sizes and forms. Large plants that generate heat, electricity or both through incineration should be located close to the source of waste and should generally be situated in industrial areas. It may soon become technologically and financially feasible for small EFW incineration plants or those involving anaerobic digestion to become more commonplace. Where the development of such smaller facilities is compatible with the National Waste Strategy and Area Waste Plan, their location outside their normal industrial settings or in rural areas should not be dismissed.

4.28 Civic amenity sites should be sited in convenient locations and in such a way that maintains the amenity of the surrounding area. Small-scale household recycling centres can be located in places where multipurpose trips are made possible. Traditionally this has been beside supermarkets. Provided the general amenity of an area is maintained however, there is no reason why such facilities cannot be located by shopping centres, places of employment, leisure and recreational facilities, petrol stations and new housing areas.