200 tonnes of illegal waste dumped at Edinburgh farm

An abandoned Edinburgh farm housing 200 tonnes of illegal waste disguised as packaged silage has been discovered

The huge volumes of waste were discovered in outbuildings at Meadowfield Farm and would have cost over 60,000 to dispose of legally. Authorities believe this is the first crime of its type to have occurred in Scotland.

Authorities believe that the this act of industrial-scale fly-tipping may have taken place at the farm during the Commonwealth Games.

Included within the waste was a huge range of materials, including over 600 bundles of building rubble, paper and cloth.

The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency believe that those responsible used lorries to transport the waste to the farm and would have needed a forklift truck to stack the waste.

Speaking about the crime Calum MacDonald, Sepa’s executive director, said:

“This is a very significant number of bales that are full of waste that have been brought to the farm illicitly and deposited without the knowledge of the owner of the property.

“When intact, the bales have the exact same appearance as an agricultural silage bale and this may be why this wasn’t noticed when the waste was deposited at the site.”

An investigation spearheaded by SEPA is now underway as part of a crackdown on fly-tipping across the whole of Scotland.