A new £900m incinerator that will take 25 years to complete has recently been approved in North Yorkshire.

The new recycling facility is expected to save tax payers up too as much as £320m as the government has just started to fine local councils for throwing rubbish into landfill sites.

Many residents, campaigners and even local parish councillors have pleaded with the council to reject the proposal which is the biggest contract ever awarded in North Yorkshire. However the scheme has been approved after council officials stressed that maintaining any current waste management schemes was no longer an option after the government announcement that they would raise landfill tax.

The new incinerator will be built in Allerton near Harrogate and will create 70 new jobs. The new facility will allow local councils to hit 50% waste recycling targets by 2020.

Many new technologies will be used at the plant including a mechanical sorting machine and an anaerobic digestion system for food waste which will produce green energy for local use. There will also be a thermal treatment plant which will use waste to make thermal energy to power 40,000 homes in the local area.

According to environmental organisation, the Green Alliance cheap energy from waste could help the UK meet nearly half its renewable energy targets by 2020.

A spokeswoman for the group said that creating alternative energy from the UK’s waste could be a great way to produce more renewable energy. She added that using Nritain’s waste for energy would only come after the right levels of waste reuse, recycling and prevention have been done.

However residual waste should not be seen as a given and lots more effort should still be made to reduce landfill levels in the UK.

This latest news follows last months announcement by the government about the introduction of the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRC EES). This scheme will see organisations play an important role in helping to cut the UK’s carbon emissions. The aim of the CRC EES is to see businesses improve their energy efficiency and achieve a reduction of 34% on the amount generated in 1990 by 2020.

As most people now use the Internet to find names and numbers, Yellow Pages and Phone Books are being thrown straight into recycling bins and clogging up landfill.

According to the local government association phone books are creating over 75,000 tonnes of waste paper every year and costing taxpayers £7.5 million to dispose of them.

The data publishers association said that phone directories are still an important resource even with many people using the Internet.

Householders who are just dropping the Yellow Pages or BT Phone directories straight into the recycle bin should contact the companies and ask for the directories not to be delivered.

All three directories can be cancelled at once by visiting the website Junk Buster

With the UK still not hitting EU recycling targets many people are starting to ask why we are nearly ten years behind the rest of Europe when it comes to recycling.

In the 1990’s the UK was only recycling less than 5% of all waste that was created whilst other countries in Europe like Germany were already recycling up to as much as 50% of their citizen’s waste.

The government is now being blamed for holding back the recycling rates in the UK because it took them so long to raise landfill fees. Back in 1996 businesses only had to pay £7 per tonne to dump rubbish in landfills compared to today’s rate which is almost £50 per tonne. With today’s charge being applied to every council in the UK it has made people recycle more even if it comes 10 years late.

People are also blaming the government for not creating more national recycling regulations as instead most of the responsibility has been put on the shoulder of local councils.

Flats in London are to have rubbish chutes updated and rubbish collection points moved closer to doorways to encourage more people to correctly recycle waste, under new proposals by London Mayor, Boris Johnson.

The new plans are designed to reduce the amount of the capital’s waste going to landfill and help save money for councils and taxpayers.

In order to carry out these plans, Mr Johnson will urge the London Waste and Recycling Board to allocate funds to help adapt London’s flats.

The mayor of London has also published his waste strategy which includes writing to borough councils to help boost recycling rates. Apart from being good for the environment it’s hoped the new strategy will help avoid massive landfill taxes and more expensive council tax bills in the future.

London Mayor, Boris Johnson will outline plans today for a new scheme called Recycle Bank that will give householders shopping vouchers for recycling their waste.

The new scheme has already been successful in America and aims to cut down on the amount of waste that ends up at landfill. The London based trial of the scheme will reward householders with an estimated £14 of shopping vouchers a month although the actual amount will be based on how much waste each family recycles.

Recent figures found that only 25% of the 4 million tonnes of household waste generated in London every year is being recycled, this puts London’s recycling rates behind the average for the rest of the UK and other international capital cities.

Recent research has found that to get rid of the three million tonnes of waste produced in England and Wales over Christmas could cost councils as much as £78 million.

Up to as much as two thirds of this waste will end up at landfill costing local councils £40 per tonne in tax to the government.

In order to help deal with all this extra Christmas waste people are urged to recycle as much as possible and compost fruit and vegetable waste. It’s also important that people don’t buy more food than they actually need so less is thrown in the bin.

Across England and Wales, local councils are expected to deal with 230,000 tonnes of food, 10,000 tonnes of wrapping paper, 20,000 tonnes of Christmas cards and 25,000 tonnes of plastic packaging.

Many people are already keen on recycling their rubbish and these figures remind us why its so important to do so.

In a recent study carried out by Suez Environment it has been found that 52% of rubbish that is dumped in London is ending up at landfill. This makes London the biggest dumper of rubbish out of all capital cities in Europe.

According to the report the average Londoner is dumping a massive 520kg of waste every year. Only 22% of waste in London is actually being recycled correctly.

Under new laws due to be introduced next year, local councils will be fined if they are found to be dumping to much waste at landfill. These fines will be £48 per tonne of landfill.

The greener capital cities in the report included Copenhagen who is throwing away 20% less rubbish than London which amounts to 420kg per person per year.

If more waste was sent to recycling plants rather than landfill the figures suggest that up to 40,000 extra jobs in London could be created.

According to figures published on August 6th 2009 by Defra, England recorded a 36.9% household recycling rate for the quarter ending on December 2008.

In comparison for figures published for the year before the household recycling and composting rate is up 3.9%. The best performing areas for this period were the East Midlands with 44.4% and Eastern England on 43.6%. In the same year the amount of household waste being sent to landfill decreased from 15.5 million tonnes to 14.2 million tonnes.

The figures also show that water usage has also decreased from 328kg per head from April 2007 up to March 2008 to the lower amount of 306kg per head between January and December 2008.

These figures are certainly encouraging as it shows that a little less waste is ending up on landfill sites. It also shows that the English public are committed to recycling.