Powderhall Waste Transfer Station

The image is of the now decommissioned incinerator at the site. With a primary school next door and the centre of Edinburgh a couple of miles away, it is difficult to believe that it was acceptable to burn 150,000 tonnes of waste a year here until the mid 1980's

The original Powderhall Destructor Plant was one of the early corporation incinerators built in 1893, with the current buildings going up in 1970 and being decommissioned in 1985, when land-fill became a more economic option than incineration and it was converted to its current function. The plant compacts refuse into containers which are then conveyed by rail to a landfill site located in disused limestone workings at East Barns near Dunbar.