Up in flames: the scandal of classist planning
YOU probably noticed the scandal this week about the “destruction zone” at Amazon’s plant in Dunfermline: a place where millions of unsold items are destroyed every year. The scale of the waste is staggering, but there is another environmental scandal unfolding in Scotland which is just as troubling. And what makes it worse is it’s the poorest Scots who are being hit the hardest.
I’m talking about incinerators: the furnaces that are used to burn household waste. The use of the machines has become increasingly common in the UK – in Scotland, the amount of waste incinerated rose by 72% from 2018 to 2019 and there are plans to increase the capacity further. There are already five working incinerators in Scotland, a further six are due to start in the next three years and four more are awaiting approval. They could be coming to a place near you.
The problem with the incinerators is some councils see them as a way of reducing the waste they send to landfill and, in theory, it does do that. Incinerators can also produce electricity which means they are marketed as “energy from waste”. This is how the firms that run incinerators try to sell them to communities and councils – to all of us.
But not many of us are convinced to be honest, especially people who live near incinerators. I’ve been speaking to the residents of Ochiltree in East Ayrshire; it’s a village near the estate where James Boswell grew up, but many of the people who live in the community are worried about the plan to build an incinerator up the road at Killoch. It would be run by Barr Environmental, who – true to the PR model – insist the site would be a way of sending less waste to landfill.
For the people of Ochiltree however, the downsides are considerable. Incinerators have to be fed with waste every day which means thousands more lorries. Mike Howes, a local campaigner, also says the idea that
Most of the pits have now closed, meaning the jobs are no longer there but the damage still is.
incinerators can be part of the solution to climate change is “dinosaur thinking”. It’s a short-term fix, he says, and we should be focusing instead on reducing, reusing and recycling.
Mike also raised another part of the problem which troubles me just as much. Incinerators are sold to communities as a source of jobs, which may be one of the reasons you’re more likely to find them in socially deprived areas. Greenpeace did a study recently which found that areas of the UK in the top 20% for deprivation host nearly one-third of the country’s incinerators. “Here in East Ayrshire,” says Mike, “we’re considered a soft touch being a socio-economic deprived area.”
The jobs argument is not convincing though. Firstly, the numbers are small – Barr says the East Ayrshire incinerator will create 17 new jobs. But the positive of new jobs has to be balanced against the environmental negatives. The same arguments were used by the mining industry which left huge parts of East Ayrshire scarred by open-cast pits. Most of the pits have now closed, meaning the jobs are no longer there but the damage still is.
The even deeper issue is what the Killoch plans reveal about our classist planning system. Why are incinerators and other industrial sites more common in places like East Ayrshire? Is it because the firms assume the residents are less likely to protest? Or is it because there’s a bias in planning that avoids better-off areas? Areas, let’s face it, where the people who own the businesses that run mines and incinerators are more likely to live.
Whatever the explanation, the people of
East Ayrshire see the problem every day. They see it in the great craters where the open-cast mines used to be, they see it in the lorries full of waste that could be trundling through their villages, and for the sake of the folk of Ochiltree, I hope the plans do not go ahead. We are told incinerators can be part of the solution, but do not believe it: they are part of the thoughtless, wasteful problem.