By John F Crawford, Waste management specialist

THE recent outcry following reports that an NHS contractor had stockpiled sensitive waste rather than incinerate it (as the contract specified) highlights an ongoing problem we’ve failed to address for decades.

Thirty years ago most NHS hospitals had in-house incineration plants for this waste, but towards the end of the 20th century new EEC legislation meant compliance would be very expensive. Rather than fund the upgrades, a decision was taken to “contract-out” the treatment and disposal services for this waste to the private sector, based on the premise that “market forces” would deliver the most cost-effective solution. This approach works for routine services but not so well where these are specialised

But contracting-out shouldn’t have meant the NHS apparently assuming that once their contractors had collected this waste, it was no longer their responsibility. Professional waste managers would normally advise that when dealing with this type of contract, it’s wise to make occasional spot-checks to ensure the specification is being met.

Part of the problem is due to a lack of calibration of the installed capacity for the thermal treatment of waste in the UK and the potential demand (it fluctuates). Anybody old enough to remember the ReChem incinerator at Larbert will recall the unfriendly (most of it unjustified) publicity it attracted and its demise, due to poor profitability rather than anything else. Nobody has ever researched the adverse impact on Scotland’s economy of new industries that need access to suitable waste disposal services. How many new factories have been built south of the Border simply because there were no suitable facilities up here?

As a nation, we have a reasonably good record of long-term strategic planning for infrastructure such as roads, bridges, public utility services and so on but we’re not so good at planning for waste treatment and disposal. While there’s a vociferous lobby campaigning for more “green” projects such as deposit return schemes, improved litter behaviour and the like (“the continentals seem to be far better at it than we are” is their usual cry) the same bunch are significantly silent when the continental attitude to waste to energy (efw) plants is cited. It’s not helped by a media that continues to call these plants “incinerators” and invariably associates these with “air, ground and water pollution”,’ “vermin” and “increased traffic and disruption”. Yet efw plants work well, are perfectly acceptable on the continent and if we had a properly-designed network of treatment plants (that included efw) installed here, it could accommodate all the NHS sensitive waste as well as coping with our projected demands.

But there’s more to it: the Scottish Government has decreed that after January 2021, landfills will be banned for accepting untreated municipal waste. There isn’t enough treatment capacity in Scotland to handle the tonnages involved so a lot of it will have to be hauled either to England or the continent for treatment. As well as significantly increasing the cost of waste disposal for all our councils (and businesses), many existing Scottish landfills will probably close as the income from the remaining (non-municipal) waste stream won’t be sufficient to make them economically viable. If these landfills close, it will have further ramifications for Scottish businesses.

We really need to be doing some urgent waste planning now to come up with practical solutions for the 2021 landfill ban, as well as NHS Scotland’s current problems.

The author worked for nearly five decades in the Scottish environmental and waste management industry.