Last year St Edmundsbury residents recycled and composted 50 percent of their waste, making us again one of the best performing authorities in the country. Overall Suffolk recycled 42.7 percent, showing that there is still room for improvement for us all.
Our aim is to continue to help residents reduce the amount of waste they create and also to reuse, recycle and compost as much as possible. This should result in even less of our rubbish ending up in landfill.
Currently the Government levies a tax on every tonne of rubbish that goes into the local landfill sites and this is currently set at £24 a tonne - set to rise by £8 per year up to 2019. As we currently send around 250,000 tonnes in to landfill each year, this is a huge financial burden for Suffolk County Council
Landfill sites across the county are filling up fast with little option for finding suitable new sites, so Suffolk County Council has to investigate alternative methods of dealing with the leftover waste. The current preferred option is Energy from Waste (burning waste to create power) as a treatment as this is a solution which will work for Suffolk economically and environmentally. However, this is only the current preferred option and the final decision is yet to be made.
See www.suffolk.gov.uk/thefutureofwaste for an update of the process and to submit any questions you may have.
