Council agrees Inverness site for Materials Recovery Facility

Highland Council has revealed the Longman Landfill site in Inverness as the preferred location to construct a new centralised waste management facility.The Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) will process all of the Highland’s 83,000 tonnes of residual (non-recyclable) waste from 2021 onwards.The MRF will be designed to process mixed residual waste and look to recover value from the material by removing recyclable streams such as metals and plastics, but in the main, producing a refuse derived fuel in readiness for sending to Energy from Waste (EfW) facilities elsewhere.The planning application process can now proceed in liaison with the Inverness Common Good Fund which is the site landowner. An implementation team have been preparing an external design of the facility and will preparing for the submission of a planning application, later in the autumn.The council will also carry out further work to look at the feasibility of constructing an EfW facility co-located on the site in the future as a long term option if resources can be identified.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 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 sent to landfill at a cost of approximately £11 million a year.