Biffa has opened a new ‘zero to landfill’ waste transfer site in Scotland amid what it is calling a ‘major economic boom’ in The Highlands.
The transfer station on the Longman Industrial Estate is Biffa’s first in Inverness and is permitted to handle up to 150,000 tonnes of general business waste and dry mixed recycling each year.
That’s the same weight as all the household waste produced by the 360,000 residents of Moray and Aberdeenshire annually, Biffa says.
With a zero-to-landfill strategy, recyclables are sent from the transfer station for processing at Biffa’s Broxburn Materials Recovery Facility near Edinburgh, while general waste goes to one of Scotland’s energy recovery plants to generate electricity for the grid.
Monica Heenighan, Biffa’s Industrial & Commercial North Area Director, said: “The Highlands are absolutely booming, with hundreds of new homes being built in Inverness and £25million of seed funding unlocked to invest in renewable energy infrastructure at the Green Freeport.
“Controlling our own waste disposal in the region is therefore a critical part of our growth strategy in the local market.
“It protects us from cost increases so that we can offer competitive prices to new customers and means we can divert non-recyclable waste from landfill to energy recovery.”
There are also plans to convert the transfer station’s plant vehicles to run on hydrotreated vegetable oil by 2027 as part of Biffa’s wider decarbonisation strategy.
Biffa’s Industrial & Commercial depot now runs alongside the transfer station following its relocation from Evanton.
