Environment minister Michael Meacher launched the research, carried out by consultants at Cambridge Econometrics who studied more than 500,000 home sales near landfill sites.
They found that homes situated within half a mile of the sites suffered a disadvantage.
The value of homes less than a quarter of mile from a landfill site were an average of 5,500 lower than the value of similar homes elsewhere.
For homes situated between a quarter and a half mile away, the average fall in value was 1,600. Beyond this distance the effect began to become negligible in most cases.
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said that putting these figures in a national context gave a total 2.48m cut in property values.
For each landfill site, the total average reduction was 400,000 or between 1.52 and 2.18 per tonne of landfilled waste.
Mr Meacher said: “The noise, the litter, the smells, the vermin and the visual scarring of neighbourhoods near landfill sites should be borne in mind by anyone watching their bin liners being thrown into the back of a dustcart.
“That is why we are keen to encourage people to recycle or reuse rubbish before throwing it away for it ultimately to end up in a landfill site.”
Original landfill tax rates were set to approximately equal the economic value of the environmental damage done by landfilling one tonne of waste, the department said.
Noise and dust
A nominal value of 2 per tonne was given to compensate for noise, dust and visual intrusion but no figure had previously been set for diminished property values.
The tax is due to rise to 15 per tonne by 2004/05. Ministers are due to consult on proposals after that to increase the landfill tax ‘escalator’ from 1 to 3 annually. This would eventually give a rate of 35 per tonne.
Further details of the report can be seen at: www.defra.gov.uk
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