Glasgow's landfill waste will be used to provide electricity to 22,000 homes through a new £155m energy-from-waste plant.
The now fully operational Glasgow Recycling and Renewable Energy Centre is now diverting 90 per cent of council-collected waste from landfill, saving 90,000 tonnes of carbon emissions each year in the process.
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The 25-year partnership between Glasgow City Council and recycling and low-carbon energy company, Viridor, will boost Glasgow’s overall recycling rates.
With national restrictions on sending biodegradable waste to landfill due to come into effect on January 1, 2021, the GRREC is pivotal to Glasgow’s efforts to meet the forthcoming landfill ban.
Councillor Anna Richardson, City Convenor for Sustainability and Carbon Reduction, is convinced the GRREC will turn around Glasgow’s environmental performance following years of disposing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste at landfill.
Councillor Richardson said: “The GRREC is a unique piece of technology that will transform how we think about and deal with waste in Glasgow. With the GRREC becoming fully operational we can take a giant stride towards our objective of Glasgow becoming the most sustainable city in Europe.
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“This new plant is an environmental success story in a number of compelling ways. The GRREC will help to ensure the days of simply dumping our waste in the ground will quickly come to an end. This provides a massive carbon reduction bonus for the city as we play our part in tackling climate change. Generating enough clean energy to power 22,000 homes also shows that sustainable solutions are within reach if we look for them.
“Our commitment to the GRREC reflects a bold but necessary move away from landfill as the primary method of waste disposal in Glasgow. Our partners Viridor deserve great praise for delivering this highly impressive facility.”
Viridor Managing Director Phil Piddington said: “The GRREC epitomises Viridor’s vision of attaching a purpose to all waste – separating valuable recyclable material, food and organic waste and giving residual waste, which cannot be recycled, a crucial role in generating low carbon electricity. In this way, we contribute to Glasgow and Scotland’s goals in terms of both resource and energy efficiency.”
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