Plans to make energy from rubbish

Rotting household rubbish could soon be used to power homes and businesses in Lincolnshire if plans are approved.

Every year 220,000 tonnes of waste are taken to landfill sites in Lincolnshire - a figure the county council wants to reduce to 70,000 tonnes by 2012.

Plans are currently being drawn up for a scheme to build an "energy-from-waste" treatment centre at the landfill site in North Hykeham near Lincoln.

A county council spokesman said the energy could power thousands of homes.

European targets

Richard Bellfield, assistant director for development at Lincolnshire County Council, said the new plant was not a "single scheme solution" and would work alongside the county's recycling programme.

"Over the next five years, the European Union has said we cannot continue to put that waste [220,000 tonnes] into landfill so we have to find another way of dealing with it.

"We want to build an energy-from-waste facility which will produce energy, heat and steam, that will power turbines and generators and then be sold on to the National Grid."

The council will be putting out a tender for the construction of the new plant shortly and hopes to start work by the end of 2009.