Waste carrier denied registration renewal

Doonin Plant Ltd was convicted of offences which occurred at the Scottish site at Bardykes Bing, between Cambuslang and Blantyre. The Court of Appeal fined the company £90,000.

Their registration renewal was refused by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and means that the carrier will no longer be able to operate as a haulier of waste materials.

The company will also be barred from carrying filled skips for other companies, even where the waste may be going for recycling and reuse.

The company had been found guilty of disposing of controlled waste in a manner likely to cause pollution of the environment and harm to human health. Waste, including paper, wood, vegetation, roofing felt, a mattress and a bath was disposed on land that was not lined with an impermeable liner, leading to the likely release of leachate and dissolved metals and of landfill gas being released into the air.

The company appealed the SEPA ban unsuccessfully. SEPA’s unit manager for South Lanarkshire, Iain Cruickshank, said: “Waste is a threat to the Scottish environment and it needs to be disposed of safely and handled by registered waste carriers.

“Householders and businesses have a ‘duty of care’ to take reasonable steps to check that people removing waste are legally allowed to do so.

Anyone passing waste on to an unregistered carrier may be committing an offence and risking enforcement action.”

SEPA’s powers range from waste data reporting to enforcing European compliance schemes. They report that amount of waste going to landfill in Scotland has more than halved its 16 million tonne figure since 1994.

A total of 7.23 million tonnes of controlled waste went to landfill in Scotland in 2006. However, the risk of increased greenhouse emissions means that further reductions still need to be made. Fly tipping is also a big problem in Scotland, with over 40,921 incidents reported in 2006-2007 alone.

Alison Brown