Amid the undulating green of the Ayrshire countryside lies a road. A bendy little single-track road of the sort you find hidden among hedgerows across Britain. But then, at a point precisely the middle of nowhere, the road becomes something entirely different.
It is no longer content to wind narrowly through the farmland: it has pretensions to greater things.
For the lost motorist it is instantly perplexing. The single-track road suddenly widens; where once there were potholes it is smooth; where once there was nothing road markings appear; for 700 metres the road is level and straight.
Then it stops, as suddenly as it appeared. And again it becomes the same slightly shabby old road, heading to nowhere in particular. There is no one around to ask about the road. In the nearest hamlets the locals say they know nothing about it - but on the rare occasions they have passed they have found it a little strange, too.
What the locals do not know is they are looking at an environmental project funded by a green tax that would otherwise have gone to the Treasury through customs and excise.
The scheme is funded by Canford Environmental - an environmental body registered in Companies House as a general commercial company. The money for the road has been approved by Entrust, the regulatory body in charge of funnelling money donated by landfill companies.
Officially the road has been described as a national research project which uses different types of recycled and reclaimed aggregate. But the use of recycled aggregates is hardly new.
There is another advantage to building this road. A sign alongside it gives a clue. It reads: "Barkip landfill. Waste management and recycling. Opened Monday to Sunday 0700-1900. Operated by William Tracey Ltd."
William Tracey Ltd describes itself as the largest independent waste management company in Scotland. Where the widened road ends is what the firm calls its "fully engineered, modern landfill site".
So here we have a company using money that could have gone to the Treasury to build a new access road for its lorries to speed along what was a narrow country lane to tip waste in the countryside. Under the rules of the green tax this is completely permissible.
A visit found the road busy but only with lorries trundling in and out of the site. A monitoring survey found 104 lorry movements every day - with hardly another car or farm vehicle in sight.
There is a reason why this section of road was chosen for the development. The literature for the experimental road scheme revealed it. The road had been damaged by excessive lorry movements to and from the Barkip site.
Mike Charles, senior waste campaigner for Friends of the Earth, says the Ayrshire example is depressingly familiar: "The only demonstration this road shows is the folly of allowing landfill operators to spend money on the environment."
Entrust sees things differently. "If it is an experimental road there might be a need to monitor carefully every lorry movement on the surface - so what better than virtually a private road where you can check the effect of every vehicle," a spokesman said.
The scheme is not the only one to be approved by Canford Environmental. The company also operates at the other end of the UK, in Dorset. Here it is planning to build a huge new sports facility for the residents of Poole and Bournemouth. The plans include full-size football pitches, two junior pitches, two mini pitches, a cricket pitch and a jogging track.
The scheme qualifies for green tax funding because it is improving the environment near a landfill site. But is not only sports enthusiasts who will benefit - a land registry search found that much of the site is owned by a firm called WH White and an associate company. And who is on the board of Canford but directors of WH White. And what does WH White do? It is the landfill operator that is putting money into the centre.
There are 10 directors of Canford Environmental. One director is Michael Tracey, director of William Tracey Ltd; another is David Telford, managing director of the Factor Ten Company - a company set up to supervise the develop ment of the Ayrshire road. The company secretary, Richard Watts, is company secretary of WH White. Two other directors, William Riddle and Jonathan Fryett, are also directors of WH White. Two others, Richard Harding and Martin Ross, are directors of companies associated with WH White. Another is the general manager of Canford Environmental. This leaves two people independent of the two landfill operators: a solicitor and a university professor.
So the net result is this - Canford has funded one road that benefits one waste disposal company that holds a directorship, and plans to provide a sports centre that will benefit a further two companies that between them have five directors on the Canford board.
Environmental bodies are expected to stay at arm's length from the landfill operators. The companies' directors do not dominate the board. But schemes such as these have led some to shake their heads. Mike Charles of Friends of the Earth says: "This shows you cannot trust the landfill operators to spend millions of pounds of money to help the environment."
Canford disagrees. Its general manager, Adrian Gunner, yesterday defended both the road and the sports centre: "I am very excited about the road; I believe it is the first genuine national research project outside a transport laboratory. Because the landfill operator knows the tonnage of every vehicle we can really work out how effective the materials are. I don't see it as a benefit to William Tracey because they would have to drive along it."
On the sports centre he said: "This landfill tax provision is to provide full-size soccer pitches, which everybody knows you cannot make a lot of money out of, so I don't see how the WH White directors will benefit financially out of it.
"They intend to leave the management of them to Poole and Bournemouth councils. It will be wonderful for the community. The rest of the project, which is profit-making, is not being funded from landfill tax."
