Planning for sustainable waste management in Scotland
20 October 2020 | 2 min read
Since implementing the Scottish National Zero Waste Plan, North Lanarkshire Council has witnessed a significant increase in the amount of recyclable waste collected. Scotland’s ambition is to recycle 70% of its waste and resources in accordance with Making Things Last: A Circular Economy Strategy for Scotland.
To expand the Council’s waste-handling capacity and support them in their mission to achieve zero waste, our Belfast Planning and Waste teams are working together to deliver multi-million-pound waste facilities in North Lanarkshire.
The Zero Waste Plan aims to effectively utilise all existing resources by promoting the repurposing and recycling of materials. Our Waste team have been advising on a range of infrastructure projects to provide greater flexibility and waste-handling capacity within the Council area to collect, reuse, recycle and process waste to maximise efficiency.
RPS Planning Director, Seamus Fay, has been leading the Belfast Planning team in submitting two major applications in Cleland and Airdrie involving a waste transfer station and materials recovery facility. We coordinated the facility design and carried out a Pre-Application consultation in line with current government regulations including an online virtual public consultation event, as well as working with our environmental colleagues in Edinburgh to undertake a series of preliminary assessments to support the submission of the formal applications.
So far, the Planning team have assisted in submitting planning applications which will see the delivery of c. £10 million of investment in waste infrastructure and hope to continue these efforts with a number of new planning appointments anticipated in early 2021.
Seamus Fay commented; “The recent planning applications for North Lanarkshire Council have shown the benefits and efficiencies of our combined in-house planning and waste teams. We look forward to working towards further appointments and employing our multi-disciplinary expertise to deliver these challenging and critical recycling targets.”