Greengairs is a village in

North Lanarkshire North Lanarkshire ( sco, North Lanrikshire; gd, Siorrachd Lannraig a Tuath) is one of 32 council areas of Scotland. It borders the northeast of the City of Glasgow and contains many of Glasgow's suburbs and commuter towns and villages. It also ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

. Greengairs is shown on a map by

Roy Roy is a masculine given name and a family surname with varied origin. In Anglo-Norman England, the name derived from the Norman ''roy'', meaning "king", while its Old French cognate, ''rey'' or ''roy'' (modern ''roi''), likewise gave rise to ...

c.1754 under the name of Green Geirs. In toponymy the name means "green strips of grass". Lying southeast of

Cumbernauld Cumbernauld (; gd, Comar nan Allt, meeting of the streams) is a large town in the historic county of Dunbartonshire and council area of North Lanarkshire, Scotland. It is the tenth most-populous locality in Scotland and the most populated t ...

and north east of Airdrie, the village consists mainly of local authority housing. Between them Greengairs and

Wattston Wattston is a village on the B803, west of Greengairs in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. Between them Wattston and Greengairs have about 1,190 residents. It is around 4 km south of Cumbernauld, and 4 km north of Airdrie. Other places nea ...

have about 1,190 residents. It developed in the nineteenth century due to increased

coal mining Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

and

quarrying A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their environ ...

. Ironstone was first mined by the Summerlee Iron Company in the 1840s. It was in the parish of

New Monkland Monklands (''Bad nam Manach'' in Scottish Gaelic) was, between 1975 and 1996, one of nineteen local government districts in the Strathclyde region of Scotland. The district was formed by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 from: *The bu ...

or East Monkland. It also historically had its own school; the teachers had a house but no salary. The village was badly affected by the Stanrigg Mining Disaster where, in July 1918, a collapse led to the deaths of 19 local mine workers. Greengairs power station opened in 1996, and is powered by

methane Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane on Eart ...

produced by biodegrading materials from a large

landfill A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste ...

site developed since 1990 in former open cast workings situated to the south of the village. Greengairs is the largest landfill site in Scotland, handling waste from

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

and

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...

. Greengairs has 6000m of pipes with

biogas Biogas is a mixture of gases, primarily consisting of methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide, produced from raw materials such as agricultural waste, manure, municipal waste, plant material, sewage, green waste and food waste. It is a ...

fed by 90 gas wells.

References

{{authority control Villages in North Lanarkshire