Rob Edwards

Westminster blunder deprives Scotland of anti-litter laws

from Sunday Herald, 20 March 2016

Westminster has admitted mistakenly depriving Scottish councils of powers to force businesses to clean up litter, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

The Home Office in London has confessed it made a legislative “error” when it repealed sections of an environmental protection act without realising that they applied to Scotland.

As a result local authorities north of the border no longer have legal authority to issue notices requiring companies to install rubbish bins and take other measures to prevent littering. They also can’t order public bodies to clean up their land.

The Scottish environment minister, Richard Lochhead, has accused UK ministers of having “a rubbish attitude towards Scotland’s rubbish”. He is writing to the Home Office minister, Mike Penning, demanding “urgent action” to rectify the blunder.

“Laws over litter and the environment are rightly devolved to the Scottish Parliament but the Tories at Westminster have gone ahead and repealed them without even informing the Scottish Parliament,” said Lochhead.

“It’s now over fifteen years since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, but that news doesn’t seem to have reached some parts of Whitehall yet. I am asking the UK government to reinstate the provisions they repealed – and what measures they are taking to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

The Home Office’s mistake was made when it was repealing sections 92-94A of the 1990 Environmental Protection Act so they could be replaced by new powers in the 2014 Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act.

Diageo under fire for failing to meet targets to cut pollution

from Sunday Herald, 23 August 2015

Diageo, the £11 billion drinks giant and world-leading whisky producer, has admitted breaching seven out of eight of its environmental targets to cut pollution and waste.

The British multinational, responsible for at least 24 Scottish whisky brands including Johnny Walker, Bells, J&B, Talisker and Langavulin, failed to cut waste water contamination, climate emissions and landfill waste as it promised. The company, which made over £3 billion profit in 2014, also owns Guinness, Smirnoff, Baileys, and Captain Morgan.

One of Diageo’s most polluting plants - with some of the highest emissions of any industrial site in Scotland - is the Cameronbridge grain distillery at Leven in Fife. The plant’s carbon dioxide pollution has risen in recent years to a record high.

Environmentalists have attacked the company’s “shoddy” performance, alleging that it is damaging the clean image on which its whisky depends. Diageo argued, however, that its targets were “very stretching” and it had significantly reduced its environmental impact.

In 2008 Diageo set itself eight targets to achieve in 2015, aimed at significantly improving the environmental sustainability of its business. But its latest annual report reveals that it has only managed to meet one of them – improving water efficiency by 30 per cent.

Warning that tax break will boost contaminated soil dumping

from The National, 17 August 2015

The Scottish government’s green watchdog has been accused of supporting a tax break that will lead to hundreds of thousands of tonnes of contaminated soil being dumped at landfill sites.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has backed new guidance proposed by the tax agency, Revenue Scotland, which could make it much cheaper to dispose of soil that has been polluted by industry in the past.

Under the guidance, companies wanting to get rid of contaminated soil could pay £80 a tonne less tax to tip it into landfill sites. Industry experts fear that this will mean that less soil is cleaned up for use in building projects, putting specialised soil decontamination firms out of business.

Revenue Scotland is proposing new guidance on the landfill taxes imposed on firms disposing of soil. The option that is backed by Sepa would mean that firms return to the old “dig and dump” regime of the past, according to the Edinburgh soil cleaning company, Soilutions.

In a submission to Revenue Scotland’s consultation, published last week, the company’s managing director, John Curran, warned that the guidance would open up a tax loophole. “Waste tourism from south of the border is inevitable,” he said.

‘Hello, can you help me? Am I allowed to burn down my house?’

from Sunday Herald, 9 August 2015

My fridge is a biohazard, my bathwater has turned lurid green and I don’t know how to dispose of my false teeth. And am I allowed to burn down my house?

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has revealed some of the more bizarre requests for help received recently by staff at its 24-hour emergency call centre at Holytown in North Lanarkshire.

The centre, which usually deals with floods, waste dumping, pollution and a host of other serious problems, occasionally has to cope with calls from people anxious about less earth-shattering matters. Staff have learnt to “expect the unexpected,” Sepa says.

Amongst the 73,000 phone calls the centre has taken in the last year, some have left trained operators bewildered. One worried caller asked if Sepa inspectors could come to his house to check for “airborne hazards” from a fridge, because everything inside had turned black while it had been switched off for three months.

A mother rang the emergency number, frantic because her bathwater had turned a lurid shade of green. It turned out that the woman’s teenage daughter had spiked a shampoo bottle with hair dye.

An elderly gentleman called up asking how he could safely dispose of an old pair of false teeth. A singing group asked if their annual party would have any environmental health implications, while one woman reported slugs in her kitchen.

Anti-litter group under fire for backing packaging industry on drinks containers

from Sunday Herald, 19 July 2015

The anti-litter charity, Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB), has been accused of being a “creature” of the corporate packaging industry after it came out against a Scottish government plan to cut litter by charging deposits on drinks containers.

Most environmental groups support the introduction of a deposit scheme because they think it would cut waste by encouraging bottles, cans and cartons to be returned and recycled. But KSB says it is a bad idea - echoing the views of big drinks firms, supermarkets and the packaging industry, with which it has developed close ties.

The Scottish Environment Minister, Richard Lochhead, launched an investigation into the feasibility of a deposit scheme for Scotland after he saw how effective it was in reducing litter in Sweden. In May, he called for evidence from industry and others, after publishing a report highlighting the benefits of 10p or 20p deposits on drinks containers.

Deposits would encourage people to return containers and get their money back, the minister argued. Like charging for plastic carrier bags, a deposit scheme “has the potential to be very beneficial for the environment”, he said.

Leading environmental groups agree that a deposit scheme would reduce litter and boost recycling. But the scheme has been rejected by drink, retail and packaging companies because of the difficulties they will have collecting and returning containers.

Cast-off clothing from charity shops ‘is killing culture’ in Ghana

from Sunday Herald, 13 July 2014

The cast-off clothes that people give to charity shops are swamping the African republic of Ghana, destroying its native textile industry and threatening its culture.

About 90 per cent of the shirts, trousers, dresses, shoes and other garments donated to High Street shops end up being exported, mostly to Africa. Ghana is the biggest recipient and calls the trade ‘obroni wawu’ - literally meaning ‘white men’s dead clothes’. 

Some 30,000 tonnes of second-hand clothes are exported from the UK to Ghana every year, helping to create a booming £50 million market. More than half the clothes now bought in Ghana are cast-offs from Europe and the US.

But according to Osei-Bonsu Safo Kantanka, a historian from Bonwire in the Ashanti region of Ghana, the trade is a disaster. “It is killing our culture,” he said. “If there was no obroni wawu, a lot of people would turn to the local type of dress.”

He pointed out that second-hand clothing was much cheaper than native garments. “Our belief and respect for our own things has faded to a degree that if we are not very careful sometime, somewhere, someday, we will not see some of our own things anymore.”

Revealed: the threat to the Commonwealth Games from a tyre dump fire

from Sunday Herald, 11 May 2014

A dump of more than 100,000 waste tyres on the flight path to Glasgow Airport has been identified as a fire risk that could prevent athletes and dignitaries from flying in for the Commonwealth Games in July.

But attempts by the government’s Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) to reduce the risk by removing the tyres have so far failed, prompting calls for a tough crackdown. 

Piles of old tyres are a recognised fire hazard, with at least ten major fires being reported across the UK within the last two years (see table below). Combustion of the rubber can produce large clouds of thick, black smoke making it dangerous for aircraft.

Sepa has assessed an unlicenced waste tyre store on Lyon Road in Linwood in Renfrewshire “as a potential fire risk ahead of the coming Commonwealth Games”. The site is “of concern to the Scottish government,” said a report to Sepa’s board meeting last week by the chief executive, James Curran.

“This site is politically as well as environmentally sensitive as it is on the flight path of Glasgow Airport,” he pointed out. Sepa has slapped an enforcement notice on the site’s operator to remove the tyres, but the deadline has had to be extended to 31 May.

The fatal dangers of working in the recycling industry

from Hesamag, April 2014

Mark Wright was “a big soft teddy bear of a man”, according to his mother, Dorothy. And he was worried about safety standards at the recycling plant where he worked at Saltney in North Wales.

On 12 April 2005 he was told by his boss to put more than 3,500 aerosol cans into a mechanical crusher. They exploded and caught fire, sealing a door and trapping Mark inside. When he was freed, he walked to an ambulance before collapsing with 90 per cent burns.

“In the one act of kindness shown to us, the hospital kept our son on a life support system long enough for us to drive the five hours needed to be there to say our goodbyes,” said Dorothy. “He was 37 years old. He had been with his wife since he was 19 and had two children whom he just adored.”

Since their son’s untimely death, Dorothy and her husband, Douglas, have been fighting for justice. Their long and ultimately frustrating struggle has helped expose the serious dangers of working in the burgeoning waste recycling business in the UK. It has also highlighted deep flaws in the way the country’s judicial system handles health and safety at work.

The Crown Prosecution Service initially decided that there was not enough evidence to charge the company, Deeside Metal, or any of its managers with manslaughter. Then after an inquest into the death in 2009, it announced that it was pursuing a charge of manslaughter against the general manager, Robert Roberts.

But this was rejected by a trial judge as an “abuse of process” because it was too long after the accident. Roberts was left to face a lesser charge of breaching health and safety legislation, to which he pleaded guilty and was fined £10,000 by Caernarfon Crown Court in December 2010.

Bid to restart dirty waste plant under fire

from Sunday Herald, 23 March 2014

A newly formed company is bidding to restart Scotland’s dirtiest waste incinerator in the face of fierce opposition, the Sunday Herald can reveal. 

Polish-owned Rank Recycling Scotland (RRS) has taken over the Dargavel energy-from-waste plant in Dumfries and is planning to apply for a permit to fire it up again. The plant was banned from operating after hundreds of toxic pollution breaches and a two-day blaze last July left up to 800 tonnes of partially-burnt and potentially stinking waste.

RRS acquired the assets of the company that used to run the plant, Scotgen (Dumfries), on the day it went into administration in October. Scotgen’s former project director, Lloyd Brotherton, is now project director for RRS, though the company has different owners. 

Critics fear that allowing the new company to simply take over the incinerator from its defunct predecessor is an “abuse of process”. They are demanding that the new permit application be toughly scrutinised by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa).

Sepa revoked Scotgen’s operating permit in August, but the company launched an appeal to overturn the move. The appeal, however, was withdrawn in February, after Sepa refused to transfer ownership of the permit to RRS. 

Troubled waste incinerator on verge of bankruptcy and closure

from The Herald, 26 August 2013

Scotland’s pioneering and highly polluting waste incinerator is on the brink of bankruptcy and closure, casting doubt on the future of similar plants proposed around the country.

Scotgen, a company that has been trying to commission a controversial new energy-from-waste plant in Dumfries since 2009, has told the Court of Session in Edinburgh that it is intending to go into administration.

At the same time, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) is reviewing the plant’s authorisation to operate, following hundreds of pollution breaches, an explosion and a major fire. Since February, Sepa has slapped three legal notices on Scotgen requiring it to clean up its operations.

The most recent on 26 July ordered the company to remove partially burnt waste from the site left after the fire last month so that it didn’t stink or attract flies and rats. According to Sepa, Scotgen has so far failed to comply and its plant is not currently operating.

"Sepa is currently assessing Scotgen's overall performance with complying with the conditions of the permit,” said Ian Conroy, Sepa's technical support manager in the southwest. “We are currently considering the further action that is necessary to be taken with regards to recent events and the historical performance of the facility.”

According to Dr Richard Dixon, the director of Friends of the Earth Scotland, the Dumfries plant now “looks doomed”. This was “bad news” for up to a dozen similar plants planned across Scotland, he argued.

“No community in Scotland can have confidence that any other company can do what Scotgen has repeatedly failed to do,” he said. “The failure of the Scotgen plant shows us that we should give up plans to burn waste and work much harder on recycling and avoiding waste in the first place.”

Revealed: how the Scottish government sold out to supermarkets on food waste

from Sunday Herald, 17 March 2013

A high-profile Scottish government campaign to cut food waste had to be soft-pedalled to avoid offending the big supermarkets, a document leaked to the Sunday Herald reveals.

Campaign staff were forbidden from advising shoppers to buy less food or to ignore ‘buy one get one free’ (BOGOF) offers because Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco were “extremely sensitive about this subject”. Winning their co-operation for the campaign had been “very difficult”, says an internal briefing.

Environmentalists have accused ministers of “selling out” to big business at the expense of pollution and waste. “You wonder which campaign will be neutered next in the supermarkets' BOGOF deal with the government,” said Dr Richard Dixon, the director of Friends of the Earth Scotland. 

The campaign, launched by the environment minister, Richard Lochhead MSP, last October, included TV, radio and newspaper adverts, social media and a travelling supermarket roadshow. The aim was to try and prevent people throwing away up to a fifth of their food, which is reckoned to cost Scotland a massive £1 billion a year.

Over two months, teams were recruited to staff stalls at major branches of Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco in Glasgow, Paisley, Falkirk, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness and elsewhere. They were equipped with branded bodywarmers, baseball caps and iPads and told to “engage as many people as possible”. 

The strapline for the campaign was “shop smarter, waste less, save more.” But according to the official 69-page briefing for staff obtained by the Sunday Herald, they had to play down the central message for fear of upsetting the supermarkets.

Ministers under fire for promoting food packaging

from Sunday Herald, 17 March 2013

Scottish ministers have been accused of surrendering to the propaganda of the £11 billion packaging industry by forming a partnership that promotes food wrappings.

A government website aimed at encouraging people to waste less food waxes lyrical about the benefits of packaging – and it is backed by the industry’s Packaging Federation. “Food loves the packaging it comes in,” the website says.

“There’s nothing better to protect it and keep it fresher for longer. From ziplocks on cheese packs to breathable fruit and veg bags, it has been cleverly designed with all sorts of cunning features.”

But according to the Green MSP, Alison Johnstone, this will confuse the public. “Most waste information urges you to try and avoid over-packaging of fresh food, not tell you how brilliant it is,” she said.

Crackdown on waste incinerator that breached toxic pollution limits

from Sunday Herald, 20 January 2013

Toxic pollution breaches and an explosion at a new waste incinerator have triggered tough legal action and an investigation by government safety watchdogs, upsetting plans for a dozen more waste-burning plants across Scotland.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) last week slapped an enforcement notice on Scotgen, a company that is trying to commission a pioneering “energy-from-waste” plant at Dargavel in Dumfries.

This follows an admission that the plant breached safety limits by emitting more cancer-causing dioxins than permitted into the air in October, and then failed to promptly inform Sepa. The company has been ordered to restrict the plant’s operations, and to ensure that future monitoring results are provided as soon as possible.

Scotgen is also under investigation by the Health and Safety Executive following a “pipe burst” at the Dargavel plant in August. According to a report by the company, nearby pipework and a roof were damaged by a steam explosion.

Environmental groups and local campaigners say that the plant is dangerous and are demanding that it be immediately shut down. They are also calling for plans for other waste incinerators in Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Lothian, Perth, Aberdeenshire and Invergordon to be halted (see table below).

Trying to move Scotland towards zero waste

for Sunday Herald, 20 January 2013 

The way that Scotland deals with its reeking mountains of household waste has been revolutionised over the last decade. It has moved from recycling less than five per cent in 2000 to recycling over 40% in 2011.

The trouble, though, is that is not enough. In order to comply with European Union legislation and to help achieve its “zero waste" ambition, the Scottish government is aiming to recycle 50% by 2013 and 70% by 2025. 

But it is going to have difficulties fulfilling those aspirations. The more waste is recycled, the harder it becomes to recycle what’s left. Much is contaminated, and there’s a limit to the number of materials that can be reused or remade.

Research for the Scottish government in 2010 suggested that a quarter of municipal waste was incapable of being recycled or composted. So in order to avoid that being dumped in landfill sites, the idea is that it could be burnt, gasified or otherwise treated to make energy.

Hence councils and private companies have been falling over themselves in the last few years to suggest shiny, new energy-from-waste plants across the country. Local communities, however, have not been exactly welcoming. 

Now in shops: the plastic bag that biodegrades

from Sunday Herald, 06 January 2013

Plastic bags that disintegrate safely instead of persisting and polluting the environment have been introduced by one of Britain’s leading retailers.

John Lewis department stores have started using what they say is the UK’s first biodegradable polythene packaging for millions of the household products they sell every year.

Compounds added to new bags for bed linen and school wear ensure that they break down harmlessly even if buried in landfill dumps, the company claims. The plastic will rot into water, gas and humus within 15 years, it says, compared to hundreds of years for conventional plastic bags.

Later this year John Lewis is planning to start wrapping more products in the biodegradable plastic, including its own brand of curtains. After six months, the company promises to make the technology behind the new packaging available to other retailers, so it could spread.

“Our new bags are designed to make it easier for our customers to dispose of polythene bags in a more environmentally sustainable way, helping to reduce our overall impact as a business,” said Mark Gallen, packaging design and production manager at John Lewis.

Working with suppliers he discovered that introducing a small amount of additive would enable polyethylene to degrade even in the absence of air, light or heat. He hasn’t as yet disclosed exactly what the additive is.

Solved: the mystery of the 30,000 plastic toys lost at sea

20 August 2012

It has become a modern-day myth. The fate of almost 30,000 toy ducks, frogs, beavers and turtles lost in an accident at sea in 1992 has intrigued millions around the world.

Stories that they had somehow managed to migrate across the Arctic from the Pacific and circumnavigate the globe have proliferated. There have been numerous reports of them turning up years later on the east coast of the US and in Europe.

The truth, however, is less romantic, and much more disturbing. Along with billions of tonnes of other plastic wastes, they are disintegrating into tiny fragments of “plastic sand” that will pollute the planet for hundreds of years, threatening wildlife and destroying the environment.

That, at least, is the conclusion of Donovan Hohn, a New York author who has spent five years investigating what actually happened to the toys. He is due to talk about his findings at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Tuesday evening.

“At the outset, I had no intention of doing what I eventually did: quit my job, kiss my wife farewell, and ramble about the Northern Hemisphere aboard all manner of watercraft,” he wrote in his book, Moby Duck.

Toxic pollution upsets plans for waste incinerators

from Sunday Herald, 22 July 2012

A series of highly toxic emissions in breach of safety limits from Scotland’s newest waste incinerator are threatening to upset plans to build similar plants across the country.

An energy-from-waste plant at Dargavel in Dumfries has had its operations restricted by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) after it admitted releasing cancer-causing dioxins up to two and half times permitted levels into the air.

The company that runs the plant, Scotgen, is now facing difficulties getting a pollution permit for a second waste incinerator at Dovesdale Farm near Stonehouse in South Lanarkshire. This proposal has prompted 24,000 objections from local residents and others concerned about the health risks.

Scotgen’s problems are also likely to hamper plans by other companies for another 14 incinerators across Scotland. Most of them have run into fierce opposition from local communities. 

Scotgen’s Dumfries plant, commissioned in 2009 to gasify more than 20,000 tonnes of hazardous and municipal waste a year at high temperatures, has had a troubled history. Its pollution performance has been condemned as “very poor” by Sepa.

Building a church from old beer cans

from Sunday Herald, 04 March 2012

It sounds like a cross between Heath Robinson and Blue Peter, with the blessing of the Almighty and a huge heap of ingenuity. And it’s definitely not rubbish.

Thousands of old beer cans, car tyres, shipping containers, industrial pallets and straw bales are being used to build a new church and community centre in Glasgow, all with the help of local people.

The cans are being used to construct walls and furniture, the tyres to form foundations, the containers and pallets to create buildings and the straw bales to provide insulation. It’s one of the most ambitious recycling projects in the country.

With the backing of grants from the Scottish government, the lottery and Glasgow City Council, work is now starting on the first phase of the project - building an “energy hub” and community centre in Milton, a disadvantaged district in north Glasgow.

After that, the plan is to build a church, a café, a theatre, a gallery and offices, set within a landscaped public park. Further grants of £2.2 million are being applied for with the aim of having it all finished by April 2014.

Crackdown on toxic waste trade that contaminates Africa

from Sunday Herald, 13 November, 2011

More than 40 shipments of toxic waste that could contaminate developing countries have been prevented from leaving Scotland in the latest attempt to crack down on the multi-million-pound criminal trade in waste.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), the government’s green watchdog, has this year stopped or sent back export containers full of broken TVs, defunct computers, old fridges, contaminated paper, worn-out tyres and even clapped-out cars.

According to officials, the hazardous junk is heading for Africa or Asia, where much is likely to end up being burnt or dumped, triggering the escape of poisonous toxins that will pollute air and water. Sometimes electronic items will be dismantled using child labour, in a business that has links to serious, organised crime, they say.

The illegal trade is driven by the big profits to be made by selling unsafe or polluting equipment abroad, or by extracting valuable components and materials. A Sepa study suggests that traders would be able to make a profit of around £7,000 for every container of old TVs they export.

“Illegal shipments are a way for criminals to make serious money by dumping our waste on other countries,” John Kenny, Sepa’s waste and enforcement manager told the Sunday Herald.

“There are significant risks to the environment and human health as a result. That’s why Sepa is cracking down on those who flout the law by stopping waste, before it leaves Scotland, through intelligence sharing and targeted inspections.”

The invading incinerators that wreck Scotland’s zero waste plan

from Sunday Herald, 18 September 2011

It’s the invasion of the incinerators. Scotland is facing a massive 17-fold expansion in waste incineration that could blight communities, threaten health and wreck the Scottish government’s recycling targets.

An investigation by the Sunday Herald has uncovered plans for 15 new, high temperature waste plants around the country which will treat nearly three million tonnes of waste a year. This compares to the three existing incinerators that burn just 166,000 tones a year.

Almost everywhere they have been proposed, the new plants have run into fierce opposition from local residents, fearful of toxic emissions, health risks and environmental pollution. They have held angry meetings, marched in protests and gone to court.

Environmentalists point out that the proposed plants are so huge that they will swamp Scottish ministers’ much-vaunted plans for “zero waste”. The incinerators will create such a large demand for waste that they will risk reversing the major gains that have been made in recycling in recent years, they argue.

“The scale of energy from waste proposals is shocking and risks undermining the Scottish government’s zero waste vision,” said Dr Dan Barlow, head of policy with WWF Scotland.

“Burning anything like this volume of household rubbish would render the target to recycle 70 per cent of waste a pipedream. It is at odds with government policy that energy from waste would only be used for materials that can't be recycled or reused.”