Recycling your true blue propaganda

by EWAN LAMB

The thankfully thin summer edition of SB Connect,  'your community newspaper' used for propaganda purposes by Scottish Borders Council, only runs to twelve pages - four of them devoted to the promotion of waste recycling and the need to cut landfill costs.

SBC is set to spend £103,000 of public money over two years to blow its own trumpet via the pages of SB Connect which is designed, printed and distributed by Paisley-based Connect Publications (Scotland) Ltd. Virtually every household in the Borders received a copy of the latest edition at the end of last week courtesy of the postal service.

Despite the heavy emphasis on 'Reasons to Recycle' - apparently too many of us have been putting recyclable stuff in the BLACK wheelie bin - there's no mention in the current issue of the council's new arrangements on the waste management front which have - according to SBC - eliminated the need for landfill at Easter Langlee altogether, albeit at a cost of £47 million over the next five years.

As previously reported here, the multi-million pounds contract for the management and treatment of residual refuse has gone to Levenseat, a company based near the village of Forth in Lanarkshire. The costs involved in hauling an estimated 42,000 tonnes of waste by road on the 50-mile journey from Galashiels to Levenseat's premises for treatment have yet to feature in any council press statement.

The £47 million figure was revealed in a contract award notice published on the Public Contracts Scotland website. But no-one seems to have looked at the potential implications of such large-scale expenditure which is needed to beat the Scottish Government's landfill ban, effective from 2021.

Over the five years covered by the deal with Levenseat an estimated 210,000 tonnes of rubbish will be taken from the spanking new £5.5 million waste transfer station at the Easter Langlee site up to Forth.

A simple calculation - divide £47 million by 210,000 - and it is possible to estimate the cost per tonne for disposal of Borders waste via the system which came into operation at the beginning of July. The figures suggest a cost of £223.80 per tonne, and that does not include spending on kerbside collections carried out by the council.

According to an expert who works in local government procurement had SBC delivered a conventional treatment plant at Easter Langlee as planned that facility would have resulted in waste treatment costs of around £80 per tonne after inflation uplifts since the project was finally abandoned in 2015.

He said: “Anything over £100 per tonne is expensive. On the basis of the financial statistics included in the contract award notice the preferred solution appears to be a very expensive option for the Council”.

It would seem the financial difference between an environmentally unfriendly road haulage option and the failure to deliver the planned Mechanical Biological Treatment plant at Easter Langlee will be many millions of pounds over the five year lifetime of the new deal which includes an option to extend the contract further into the future.

So far the cost of the contract has not been an issue for the public, possibly because SBC has chosen not to set out the likely burden on its taxpayers. But within days of the haulage of waste to Lanarkshire kicking in concerns were being expressed about the 88 lorry movements a day needed to carry out the brand new procedure.

A report in last week's Southern Reporter by journalist Kathryn Wylie outlined the worries and fears expressed at a meeting of Galashiels Community Council. There were claims the public had been 'kept in the dark' over traffic routes for the trucks carrying the garbage.

It had been assumed the heavy vehicles would arrive at Easter Langlee via the A68, then cross Lowood Bridge onto the C77 to Easter Langlee. But in fact the lorries will use the A7 south before travelling through Galashiels.

The community council agreed to request more details of the contract with Levenseat.

In the so-called 'silly season' when news is in short supply, SB Connect should surely have been the perfect vehicle for informing the public about the shift from landfill to road transport as a means of disposing of the Borders' annual output of 42,000 tonnes of municipal waste.

But there's more...

On the day Borders posties were shoving SB Connect through our letter boxes there was a second propaganda treat in the shape of The Borderland News, a publication filled with the range of good deeds carried out on our behalf by the UK Government and our local Tory parliamentarians.

No doubt it was pure coincidence that the two productions arrived on the same day although The Borderland News also tells us of the great job Conservative-led SBC is doing.

The Scottish Borders Conservatives publication "on behalf of John Lamont MP, Rachael Hamilton MSP, Michelle Ballantyne MSP and Councillor Shona Haslam" gives the impression the Westminster Government has delivered the so-called Borderlands Growth Deal - said to be worth £345 million in total - virtually single-handed "including a smaller contribution from the SNP Government".

But once the statistics are unpicked in fact the Scottish Government (to give it its correct title) is putting up £85 million for investment north of the border while £200 million of the £260 million coming from the UK Government will be devoted to territory on the English side of the national boundary. 

The Conservative Party broadsheet includes several other political attacks on "the SNP", and there's even an accusation that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon went to Hawick ahead of the 2016 election to promise a feasibility study on extending the Borders Railway "in a bid to get votes". One is tempted to say 'how dare she' for surely no Tory politician would stoop so low.

In the interests of accuracy it was the "SNP Government" which reinstated the rail service from Edinburgh to Tweedbank in spite of strong resistance and criticism from opposition parties, including the Conservatives. The success of the Borders Railway, despite its well documented shortcomings, seems to have persuaded the Tories to get aboard and hijack the project as their own.

FOOTNOTE - Please help SBC to achieve its recycling targets by placing SB Connect and The Borderland News in the BLUE wheelie bin.