Carlaw slams “hellish vision” for Incineration Plant at Loganswell

Speaking in his Member's Debate on the Proposed Waste Incineration Plant at Loganswell, Jackson Carlaw, Scottish Conservative MSP for West of Scotland, will say (check against delivery):

"What is being proposed in Newton Mearns, a quiet, leafy residential suburb, takes us nearer the world of Quatermass and the movie sets of James Bond.

"We are being presented with a hellish vision – an unsolicited application on green-belt land, the largest waste incineration plant in Europe, bigger still than the 18 hole golf course it is to sit beside, with over a dozen chimneys each as high as 400 feet.

"The developers in their dazzling, shiny presentation risibly call it the 'Lifetime Recycling Village' conjuring up images of a Disney style retraining and holiday camp for pensioners or worse. It will be anything but. Let's cut to the chase - it is a massive industrial incinerator on a scale unseen anywhere else in the United Kingdom or Europe.

"Disingenuously, the LRV suggest they have the support of the public. Yet, my elegantly named online petition, www.dumpthewasteplant.com, has secured over 1000 pledges in just a fortnight. My mailbag has never received more angry representations.

"This is neither a futuristic green vision nor the way forward for Scotland. Yes, we need a mixed response to achieve Scotland's zero waste to landfill ambitions. But super sized incineration plants straddling Scotland will, as SEPA fears, be inefficient, venting the heat they produce into the atmosphere.

"This plan is a one way descent to hell for Eastwood. The local community is mobilising and wider Scotland should be alarmed by the implications. These are dangerous, insane, yet curiously half baked plans which I trust Ministers will resist."

 The exchange in the Scottish Parliament's Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee - in which Friends of the Earth's CEO Duncan McLaren condemned plans for an incinerator in East Renfrewshire – follows (from November 23rd 2010):

Duncan McLaren: Much stronger guidance needs to be given at this critical moment, when infrastructure is being put in place to manage waste for the next 10 or 15 years. Too many proposals are still coming forward in areas such as Inverness and East Renfrewshire—I have seen two in the past month—for facilities that take mixed waste and degrade it into a fuel instead of separating it to renew resource. Whenever we burn waste, trees are cut down somewhere else in the world or minerals are mined or chemicals are processed. That generates associated emissions from our consumption of things that replace the things that we choose to burn...

Jackson Carlaw: Did I understand you to say that you are distinctly lukewarm about the proposal to build Europe's largest incinerator in East Renfrewshire?

Duncan McLaren: Indeed.

Jackson Carlaw: How very encouraging.

Duncan McLaren: Indeed, it mildly describes my view, which is that it would be insane to build Europe's largest incinerator in East Renfrewshire.

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