Waste management company Viridor will host a virtual exhibition this week consulting the local community on its plans to build a plastics reprocessing plant at Dunbar in Scotland.
The exhibition was originally due to be held as a consultation process with drop-in sessions but due to the circumstances brought about by Covid-19, this will now be moved to a virtual exhibition with the option of local residents requesting paper copies of the plans by telephone or email.
Viridor briefed its Dunbar Community Liaison Group earlier this year that it would begin the planning application process with East Lothian Council to build a polymers recycling facility at its Dunbar site, which currently hosts an energy recovery facility (ERF).
The plant is expected to have the capacity to process up to 85,000 tonnes of plastic every year, thereby increasing the UK’s domestic recycling capacity – Viridor announced last year that from 2020 it would be processing all of its plastic waste domestically.
Similar to the Viridor plastic recycling plant in Avonmouth, which is currently under construction, the facility at Dunbar would receive low-carbon heat and power generated from non-recyclable waste at its adjacent ERF.
Viridor’s Dunbar ERF currently generates 258 gigawatt hours (GWh) of energy – enough to continuously power the equivalent of 70,656 homes – and 10 megawatts (MW) of heat.
Commenting on the proposal for a plant at Dunbar, a Viridor spokesperson said: “Our plans are designed to help Scotland deliver its ambitious climate change and circular economy targets. Scotland’s goal is to ensure that recyclable materials consumed here are retained within a Scottish circular economy. To achieve this, Scotland will need companies like Viridor to invest in recycling infrastructure, such as the facility we are proposing.
“Dunbar represents an excellent opportunity to co-locate a new polymers reprocessing plant with Dunbar ERF. In this way, the country will be able to achieve both its resource and energy efficiency goals.”
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