Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy for Lincolnshire

The Facts

In Lincolnshire we produce around 360,000 tonnes of municipal waste each year, and this has been growing annually by between 1% and 2% per year. However, the current recession has temporarily stopped this growth as people are unable to buy as much and are consequently throwing less away.  Most of this rubbish, amounting to about half a tonne of waste per year for each person living in the county, is collected directly from your home or taken to our Household Waste Recycling Centres.

Last year we recycled and composted over 50% of our waste, with the remainder being sent to landfill.

However, waste management in the county now needs to alter to meet the challenges of evolving national and European laws.

The Challenge

Some of the main challenges we face are to:

• Divert waste away from landfill to new treatment facilities 
• Increase recycling, composting and energy recovery 
• Minimise waste to stop the annual growth rate in the amount of waste produced

Since 2005 the amount of waste we can send to landfill has been set by the Government. If the Council exceeds this limit we may have to pay a fine of £150 per tonne for each tonne landfilled over our allowance.  This could lead to the County Council being fined millions of pounds each year.

Our Waste Strategy

Our Waste Strategy sets out how we intend to deal with the municipal waste in Lincolnshire for the coming years, and the options available to us as alternatives to landfilling our waste.

In order to meet the requirements of the EU Landfill Directive to reduce the amount of waste going to Landfill the County Council has decided to build an Energy from Waste plant at North Hykeham. This plant will eventually recover energy from up to 150,000 tonnes of municipal waste that would otherwise have been disposed of in landfill.

The plant should be fully operational in 2013.

To find out more about our Waste Strategy select the documents from the Download section.