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Environmental motivations

‘What’s so bad about landfill?’ You may ask. After all, it’s where your residual household waste has been sent for generations and it doesn’t seem to be causing you any harm, does it?

We owe it to future generations to act now and start managing our residual waste in a more environmentally friendly ways.

The reality is that landfill sites are harming all of us and the environment in which we live on a daily basis.

Landfill is at the bottom of the Waste Hierarchy for good reason.

About two-thirds of the waste that we send to landfill is biodegradable. This includes food waste, textiles, paper and garden waste. As this waste decomposes buried under layers of earth, it lets of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas which is about 20 times more potent than Carbon Dioxide. This means that landfill sites are directly linked to global warming, which threatens the future sustainability of our planet.

Landfills released 25% of the UK’s methane emissions in 2001.  Many landfill sites (including the one used by the Partnership in Beddington) now go to great lengths to do what they can to reduce the amount of methane released into the air.  For more information please visit our ‘Waste disposal – Beddington Lane’ page.

On a more local level, there is also the major impact that landfill sites can have on their immediate surroundings. Often located in old quarries and mines, landfill sites themselves can be a significant blot on the landscape.

Existing landfill sites are filling up fast and suitable locations for new ones are almost impossible to find. We owe it to future generations to act now and start managing our residual waste in a more environmentally friendly ways.