No doubt there were\u00a0loud cheers when McBurgher’s announced their\u00a0intention to locate a new drive-through just down the road. And what better place to locate it? Although Dumbar isn’t quite the Drive Thru Town it used to be, more Drive Past, it is now officially a Take-Away and Throw-Away Town with a critical mass of cheap eateries and\u00a0woeful food business recycling rates.\u00a0Anyway some say this\u00a0is exactly what the locality was missing – another take-away joint. As every schoolgirl knows easy access to fast food encourages better health, slimmer waist-lines (no pun intended), a better quality tourism, higher levels of inward investment and is a\u00a0key motivator for homebuyers. Except none of this is true. I am reliably informed that a new home in Tranent will fetch a premium price, while in Dumbar it goes for below the average. Location isn’t everything, or maybe it is?<\/p>\n
Anyway now two brand new hills will\u00a0grace the skyline and form an inviting gateway to our very own “out of town” shopping experience.<\/p>\n
Mmmmmmmmmm.<\/p>\n
This part of the Garden County\u00a0already has the snaking\u00a0curves of a cement factory – Scotland’s biggest carbon emitter and whose\u00a0plume\u00a0never seems to rest. That angular\u00a0lump of metal that cuts the\u00a0skyline not so far away –\u00a0our very own\u00a0cracked nuclear reactor. \u00a0I find\u00a0both interesting – kind of – as they are \u00a0aesthetically of their time.<\/p>\n
Then there’s that\u00a0other mountain – an artificial\u00a0waste one (most waste is\u00a0mounded these days to\u00a0control effluents). Though\u00a0that one won’t grow so much any more\u00a0as\u00a0it seems that with rising costs our friends at #viridor are going to stop the mounding (good) and start the\u00a0burning (hmmm) of all that low quality residual household waste that Scotland has\u00a0not already diligently recycled. Leave aside\u00a0the growing evidence of\u00a0overcapacity in EfW plants once they all start operating and that this could even limit UK recycling rates. Never mind the circular economy and all that.<\/p>\n
It remains\u00a0a bit of a mystery – to me at least – what will happen to the mountain of low grade waste heat that will be\u00a0created. Some serious industrial ecology is clearly required to replace the circular thinking, as more homes could be heated than you can even count in this part of the world. Methinks a\u00a0dirty great big glasshouse to grow\u00a0endives, frisee and radicchio for bien pensants like me would be nice. Who knows if there’s\u00a0already a secret scheme\u00a0to create a massive district heated new town? What would we call it? New Hampshire?<\/p>\n
\nIncinerator could power 39,000 homes<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"