A fall in household waste arisings and increased recycling has led to Dorset county council withdrawing its bid for nearly £80 million in government PFI funding.

Dorset has withdrawn its application for PFI funding to provide infrastructure to treat the county's waste

The council's cabinet had approved proposals to seek between £74-78 million in PFI funding in March this year.

However, at a meeting last week (December 2) it opted to withdraw the bid following a recommendation from the council's project board.

Funding would have gone towards the development and operation of a 115,000 tonnes-a-year capacity waste treatment facility, with the council having used energy-from-waste being as the reference project in its Outline Business Case (OBC).

The OBC had been devised in December 2008 on the basis of waste arisings in the county increasing by 1% year-on-year.

But, even within the approved OBC, the council acknowledgement that waste arisings in the county were falling, with figures showing a 1.5% decline from 231,611 tonnes of municipal waste in 2006/07 to 228,151 tonnes 2007/08.

Dorset county council's cabinet member for the environment, Hilary Cox, said: "Thanks to the recent efforts of our residents in Dorset we are now beginning to see a real reduction in volumes of household waste. At 48%, we already have one of the highest recycling rates in the UK.

"Our joint waste management strategy aims to achieve 60% recycling by 2015/16. By reaching this target we will obviously reduce the volume of waste that requires treatment and this has a negative impact for our original PFI business case."

Cllr Cox said that alternative treatment options and emerging technologies were now available to the council and that these could provide "viable short to medium term options that give us the flexibility and time to develop the most suitable long-term solution for Dorset's waste".

The council said that the project board will continue to assess alternatives to meet landfill diversion targets set by the government.

And, said it was "confident" it could find an alternative method without the need to be tied into the PFI scheme at this stage. Cllr Cox added: "We believe that at this stage PFI is not the best option for Dorset."

Dorset county council, spent £5.7 million on landfilling 105,000 tonnes of waste in 2008/09.