The council has agreed to adopt all the aspects of a suggested waste plan which includes proposals for a landfill site. The plan was written in partnership with the city council and covers all of Nottingham and Nottinghamshire's waste. It was produced following an extensive five-year consultation process.
Despite the introduction of new recycling schemes by the county council and local district councils, the council said that it needs a new landfill site because the existing landfill sites are running out of space. Three landfill sites at Sutton, Barnstone and Burntstump, which currently take more than half the county's waste will be full by 2007. The council said that this leaves four landfills to serve the whole of Nottinghamshire. Without a new site it is predicted that waste will have to be transported out of the county to Daneshill in Bassetlaw within two years.
Last year, following a three-month public inquiry, an independent government inspector's report said that a new landfill site was needed in Nottinghamshire.
A planning application has already been made for the council's preferred site at Bentinck Void, a derelict opencast coal mine near Kirkby-in-Ashfield. Independent surveys of the site have shown landfill operations on the site can be managed without harming local wildlife.
In 1999, residents in the region threw away around 580,000 tonnes of waste. Currently, 67% of the county and city's household waste is landfilled, 23% is incinerated, 7% is recycled and 3% is composted.
Councillor Terry Butler, cabinet member for the environment said: “We've looked at all the options available to us very carefully. We've calculated that even if we meet all the government's recycling targets, we will start to run out of suitable sites to dispose of people's rubbish by 2007. This is a fact we simply cannot get away from.
“We're working hard to boost recycling, composting and the reuse of waste materials at our Household Waste and Recycling Centres besides our groundbreaking work on recovering energy from waste. This work is paying off. Latest figures show Nottinghamshire is one of the top four county councils nationally for sending less waste to landfill.
“We've also created one of the first waste strategies in the UK which sets out how local district councils and ourselves will work together to get more households recycling. But regrettably getting more households to recycle their waste cannot alone remove the urgent need for a new landfill site. We still have to make sure there is enough provision to dispose of the millions of tonnes of waste produced by industry.”
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