A NEW waste and power plant that will recycle more than one million tonnes of plastic, metals and paper is to be built at the cost of £111 million.
The facility, backed by the UK Green Investment Bank and other investors, is to be built at Forth by Lanark and operated by Scottish recycling business Levenseat Ltd.
More than 100 jobs will be created during its construction and 50 full-time jobs will be appointed once the site is operational, with the facility fully operational by the middle of 2017.
The UK Green Investment Bank was launched in November 2012 with £3.8 billion of funding from the UK Government. It is a "for profit" bank designed to help the UK's transition to a "greener" economy.
The project in Forth, the Levenseat Renewable Energy Limited 12.5 MWe energy from waste (EfW) plant, aims to recycle over one million tonnes of materials including plastics, metals, paper and aggregates over its lifetime.
Its backers say it is expected to save around 1.3 million tonnes of CO2e emissions, divert over 1.4 million tonnes of waste from landfill and produce enough electricity to supply the equivalent of almost 18,000 homes over its lifetime.
It will aim to generate 75 GWh (gigawatt-hour) of electricity per year.
Peter MacLaren, director of Levenseat, said it was bringing a "first-of-kind technology" to the UK market.
"This is further evidence of our commitment to developing new environmental and economic solutions for waste management," he said.
"With the construction of our new plant together with our wider established facility we will be delivering to the market Scotland's largest integrated facility providing treatment and recovery for a wide range of waste materials.
"We look forward to announcing further details shortly regarding the technology being used and our programme of Community Benefits including opportunities for local recruitment.
"We are also actively pursuing the opportunity to supply spare heat from the new plant to local homes."
The facility as well as being backed by the Green Investment Bank has investment from the Foresight Group and Zouk Capital.
The bank has made an investment of £28.2m via a fund called UK Waste & Resource & Energy Investments.
This is the eighth investment made by the fund which has now handed out £78m of funding.
The recycling facility will recover plastics, metals, paper and card for recycling.
The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of around 1.3 million tonnes is equivalent to taking over 23,000 cars off the road for every year it operates.
The electricity created by the plant will be supplied to the national grid.
Shaun Kingsbury, chief executive of UK Green Investment Bank, said: "This first-of-kind project is the latest innovative example of how the UK is modernising its waste management infrastructure.
"By increasing recycling and using the remaining waste to produce energy, the Levenseat project will make a significant contribution towards Scotland's 'zero waste plan'."
Colin Campbell, managing partner at Zouk Capital said: "We are excited to be involved in this pioneering and strategically well placed project."
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