Plans to install a new incinerator at a glass processing plant in High Wycombe have been given the green light.

PSV Glass Ltd, in the Sands Industrial Estate, Hillbottom Road, submitted plans to dispose of clean waste pallets that the glass comes in, with the aim of preventing and reducing landfill as the company no longer has a supplier that can take them away.

The free-standing, purpose-made incinerator will stand at the side or rear of the building, with PSV saying the location has been “carefully chosen so as to minimise any visual impact and also to be convenient for the applicant’s use and to be close enough to the existing building to make heat reclamation viable”.

The incinerator will be ‘flued’, above the level of the adjacent buildings and PSV says despite the main emission being CO2, this is outweighed by the reduction of carbon footprint by reducing skip uplifts.

Writing in the design and access statement, the firm said: “It is also proposed to recover the heat from the incinerator to help heat the existing offices and workshop, thus reducing emissions from the existing heating systems.

“It is felt that this should be approved, as it will reduce traffic flow and carbon emissions from skip collection lorries, reduce the landfill requirements and provide heat reclamation to be used in the buildings on site.”

Speaking at a meeting of Wycombe District Council’s planning committee, Cllr Clive Harriss said: “As a former environment cabinet member I am very aware of the areas that suffer from poor air quality.

“We’re not discussing the appearance of this or the location of this – we’re discussing whether this is likely to be a pollutant. Therefore it is not really a planning issue.

“If my colleagues are minded to approve this and if there is then a problem, the Environment Agency will shut it down the very next day.”

“It’s not about putting a few bushes in front of it to make more attractive to others, it’s just a matter of do we accept that they’ve taken every precaution to ensure that this is not a polluter?”

Ward member, Cllr Nigel Teesdale, praised the firm, saying it had turned a problem into a benefit. He said: “Having said that, members of the site committee yesterday will have noticed a certain odour in the air.

“This odour comes from a building two doors away to the west and unfortunately the typography of the area, with hills all around, and a prevailing wind from the south west blows this odour to the residential part of Sands.

“This has been a problem for the last 16 years so when Cllr Harriss says the Environment Agency will close it down the next day, they haven’t managed to do it with that problem for the last 16 years.”

“I can see no means of filtering anything that comes out of this chimney.”

Cllr Tony Lee said it was a “brilliant idea to deal with a problem that could get out of hand very quickly if it was left”.

He said: “I really can’t see a reason we can say because there is a smell from somewhere else, that this might be a problem.”

The plans were pushed through by the majority of councillors.