Did you know? That every year UK households produce 34 million tonnes of rubbish. That's enough to cover every Premeirship football ground pitch to a depth of 11 feet. Most of this waste ends up buried in the ground in landfill sites.

The effect of waste on our environment

Landfill gas consists of 50-60% methane and 35-40% carbon dioxide. It also contains trace levels of other gases such as hydrogen sulphide and organic substances.

Landfill sites are now recognised as being the UK’s biggest man-made source of methane releases to the atmosphere. Unit for unit, methane has a greater global warming potential than carbon dioxide. This makes it one of the main causes of the greenhouse effect - which can lead to global warming.

A proportion of the gases produced within Wiltshire’s landfill sites at Lower Compton Bassett and Westbury are trapped and used to create a renewable electricity source which feeds back into the national grid.

As a nation, we need to become more sustainable – to reduce our consumption of precious raw materials and to throw away less. Rubbish is a major problem across the county. Our 2 remaining rubbish tips will be full in around 10 to 12 years and, with the overall volume of rubbish increasing by some 5% each year, we have to drive our recycling effort forward.

Did you know? On average every person in Wiltshire throws away their own body weight in rubbish every seven weeks! [source: Waste Watch]

Did you know? Each UK household produces over 1 tonne of rubbish annually, amounting to about 31 million tonnes for the UK each year. [source: Waste Watch]

Did you know? Every year, the average dustbin contains enough unrealised energy for 500 baths, 3500 showers or 5,000 hours of television. [source: www.assurre.org]

Did you know? Rubbish collection and keeping our streets clean costs council tax payers about £1.6 billion per year [source: UK Gov ].