Warwickshire spending £200,000 per month on landfill

[dutchman]

Newly released figures show that Warwickshire County Council is spending more than £200,000 every month on landfill bills.


A sign at the household waste recycling centre in Leamington Spa

The authority has to pay a levy to the government for every tonne of waste that goes to landfill.

As a result, the council is keen to get more people recycling, with numerous schemes operating in the county.

The figure has come to light because of new rules, forcing local authorities to publish all spending over £500.

Tonnes of waste


Officer Martin Stott at the recycling centre in Leamington Spa

Martin Stott, Head of Environment and Resources at Warwickshire County Council said: "We get 270,000 tonnes of waste every year produced in Warwickshire.

"Roughly half of that continues to be sent to landfill, the rest is recycled or sent to the energy from waste plant in Coventry.

"We pay landfill tax, which rises every year. At the moment it is £8 per tonne and is one of our biggest expenses. With landfill tax and a disposal charge it costs us in the region of £70 per tonne for our rubbish."

He told BBC Coventry & Warwickshire that consumerism is partly to blame: "Recycling and composting is a good thing but even that costs us money. The best solution is to buy less, chuck out less, reuse more and when you do throw things away, make it recycleable.

"It's not just the financial implications of landfill. Landfill sites are also major producers of greenhouse gas emissions."

He believes that publishing the landfill costs may help people to consider their waste more: "We want people to help us with this and chuck out less stuff: the less you chuck out, the less we have to dispose of and the less it will cost the people of Warwickshire."


At this time of year, Christmas trees add to the waste

Transparent figures

The waste disposal spending has been revealed as part of a new practice of councils publishing their spending figures online.

Back in June 2010, the government gave local authorities a deadline of January 2011 to publish information about payments they make of more than £500.

Warwickshire published their data on 31 December, saying the process is an opportunity for local public service providers, and the people and businesses that they serve, to see how their money is spent.

Joanna Rhodes, the Head of Local Financial Services at Warwickshire County Council, said: "In Warwickshire we have a policy of sharing data. We have various data sets we put up on our website."

Ms Rhodes also pointed out the council has a dedicated email address for queries about interpreting the data, which can be hard to understand in its raw published form.