For decades the traditional way of disposing of the UK's waste has been to bury it in landfill. However with landfill space fast running out and increasing concerns over it's environmental impact, the government has started to limit the amount of waste that can be disposed of in this way.
You can help to reduce the amount of waste you produce by recycling everything you can and reusing useful things again. To discover what Northamptonshire County Council is doing to minimise the amount of waste it sends to landfill, visit the pages below.
- Northamptonshire Waste Strategy
The strategy outlines what Northamptonshire's eight local authorities are doing to develop a long term waste collection and disposal plan.
- Waste Procurement Project
Northamptonshire County Council and Milton Keynes Council have come together to research and commission a waste procurement project. The project will investigate a range of waste treatment technologies that will ultimately reduce the amount of untreated waste that is sent to landfill from both local authorities.
Facts:
- Each UK household produces over 1 tonne of rubbish annually, amounting to about 31 million tonnes for the UK each year.
- In less than 2 hours the UK produces enough waste to fill the Albert Hall.
- The cost of managing the municipal waste produced in England is around £1.6 billion per year.
- If all the aluminium drinks cans sold in the UK were recycled, there would be 14 million fewer full dustbins per year.
- In the UK we use around 12.5 billion steel cans every year, or 600 per household, but nearly 10 billion of these still go to landfill.
- About one fifth of the contents of household dustbins consist of paper and card, of which nearly half is newspapers and magazines. This is equivalent to over 4kg of waste paper and card per household in the UK each week.
- Every tonne of biodegradable waste produces 300-500 cubic metres of landfill gas.