Scottish Borders Council's Easter Langlee landfill site on the outskirts of Galashiels continued to produce a cocktail of harmful greenhouse gases in 2018...the site's last full year of operation.
Figures published at the weekend - several months late - by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) show Easter Langlee pumped 384,000 kilos of methane into the atmosphere during 2018 bringing the rubbish tip's ten year total to more than 3.6 million kilos.
Last July the council ended landfilling of waste at Easter Langlee by signing a contract to have tens of thousands of tonnes of household waste from the region transferred north by road to a treatment centre in Lanarkshire.
That move followed the failed multi-million pound plan for a custom-built processing facility on the Easter Langlee site, and allowed SBC to beat the landfill ban soon to be imposed by the Scottish Government.
SBC representatives believe an end to burying rotting garbage below ground at Langlee will lead to a significant drop in greenhouse gas emissions. So the 2019 data should indicate whether that is actually happening.
The new data for the previous twelve months is contained in SEPA's Scottish Pollution Release Inventory and includes figures for all of Scotland's commercial, municipal, industrial and agricultural operations which produce greenhouse gases.
Easter Langlee remains by far the Borders region's major polluter with significant releases of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) as well as methane.
CFCs and HCFCs are classified as being far more damaging to the atmosphere than methane with both products having an annual reporting threshold of just 1 kilogram. The equivalent methane threshold is 10,000 kilos per annum.
At Easter Langlee emissions of CFCs in 2018 totalled 17 kilos, far less than the 38.3 kilos produced in 2017 and the 27.4 kilos logged in 2016.
The HCFC count for 2018 was 18.9 kilos (26.5 kilos in 2017 and 21.4 kilos in the year before that).
A further statistic shows emissions of methyl chloroform from the Borders site (reporting threshold 10 kilos) in 2018 amounted to 19.1 kilos. The figures for 2017 and 2016 were 21.5 kilos and 21.6 kilos respectively.
The volumes of methane emanating from Easter Langlee in each of the last ten years was:
2009 - 567,000 kilos; 2010 - 274,000 kilos; 2011 - 197,000 kilos; 2012 - 308,000 kilos; 2013 - 300,000 kilos; 2014 - 361,000 kilos; 2015 - 403,000 kilos; 2016 - 356,000 kilos; 2017 - 451,000 kilos; and 2018 - 384,000 kilos.
SEPA's own briefing note on methane says one of the main sources of the gas being emitted into the environment is from the natural decomposition of plant and animal matter in airless conditions. The UK's biggest man-made source of methane is from rotting rubbish in landfills. Methane is also released during the mining and distribution of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas).
According to SEPA: "On a local scale, build-up of methane poses an explosion hazard which can result in evacuation of areas over old landfills or mines.The main impact of methane is on a global scale, as a greenhouse gas. Although levels of methane in the environment are relatively low, its high 'global warming potential' (21 times that of carbon dioxide) ranks it amongst the worst of the greenhouse gases."
So far as CFCs are concerned, SEPA says: "At a global level releases of CFCs have serious environmental consequences. Their long lifetimes in the atmosphere mean that some end up in the higher atmosphere (stratosphere) where they can destroy the ozone layer, thus reducing the protection it offers the earth from the sun's harmful UV rays.
"CFCs also contribute to Global Warming (through 'the Greenhouse Effect'). Although the amounts emitted are relatively small, they have a powerful warming effect (a very high 'Global Warming Potential')".
On HCFCs the environmental watchdog has this to say: "Hydrochlorofluorocarbons are a large group of compounds, whose structure is very close to that of Chlorofluorocarbons but including one or more hydrogen atoms.
"In particular, HCFCs are now used as refrigerants (in refrigerators, freezers and air conditioning systems) and also in insulative foams. The use of HCFCs as solvents is now being phased out in developed countries and has been banned in the UK since 2001.
"Although not as stable and therefore not so persistent in the atmosphere as CFCs, HBFCs or Halons, they can still end up in the higher atmosphere (stratosphere) where they can destroy the ozone layer"
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