Watching household rubbish being turned into electricity isn’t your average day out, but when my camera group was offered the opportunity to visit the Millerhill Recycling and Energy Recovery Facility, we enthusiastically accepted the invitation. We all arrived on a fine Autumn day, carefully reverse parking under the watchful gaze of the CCTV, and entered the facility to discover the story of how the stuff we throw away avoids landfill and ends up powering 30,000 homes.
Our visit began with a warm welcome and a PowerPoint from the facility’s administration lead, before we set off to explore the plant itself. What followed was a fascinating glimpse into one of Edinburgh’s quiet success stories; a wee slice of urban life that hums away in the background, keeping the lights on while the rest of us put the bins out.
View from the waste reception building, where refuse lorries deposit household waste to be incinerated. Another view of the waste reception building, showing the bare grey of the industrial architecture. Outside the main control room, a row of coat hooks with the ubiquitous high vis jackets and safety helmets. A large metal claw gathers huge piles of rubbish to be dropped into the furnace. It’s hard to get a sense of scale, but the claw was probably abut the size of a Ford Transit. The facility was full of liminal spaces like this. As our guide told us – “if you see a lot of people, it means something’s gone wrong”. We didn’t see many people while we were there. Another liminal space – a door, on a gantry at the Millerhill RERCThe tour took us onto the roof to see a view of the surrounding countryside, slowly being encroached by massive housing developments. I was more interested in this minimal view of the huge chimney. The facility was a gift for fans of industrial still life photography A view into the furnace, where the household waste is burned at a temperature of 1,300 cThe ash pile – all that’s left after the rubbish has passed through the furnace
My Camera Stories 
Leave a comment