Let's face it - burying waste in landfills is pretty rubbish. For the past few decades that's what we've been doing with the household waste we can't recycle, but this is going to change.

Burying rubbish in landfills is a waste of money, a waste of valuable resources and has a damaging effect on our environment.

The South Tyne and Wear Waste Management Partnership, made up of Gateshead, South Tyneside and Sunderland councils, is working together to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill sites every year and dramatically increase recycling.

We asked residents and the business community what they think should happen to waste. Taking into account their feedback we developed a long term plan to improve the way we handle rubbish – it's called the Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy.

We know we can't continue to only send rubbish to landfill and our residents recognise that. We have set some ambitious targets for increasing recycling across the three councils. We are recycling around 27% of our rubbish at the moment and we need to get to 30% by 2010, 45% by 2015 and 50% by 2020. Even when we get up to 50%, that still leaves around 185,000 tonnes of non-recycled waste to be dealt with.

How are we going to increase the amount we recycle in Gateshead?

You told us that you want to be able to recycle more things at your kerbside – and we have good news - you'll soon be able to do just that.

From May 2010 we will be replacing your black Kerb-It box with a blue wheeled bin which will make it easier for you to recycle more items, including plastic bottles and flattened cardboard as well as paper, glass and cans. 

Everyone needs to play their part in making Gateshead greener by recycling as much as they possibly can.

We are also looking at ways to improve the household recycling centres and recycling banks across the borough. As well as this we are also looking to develop a new Materials Recycling Facility that will allow additional recycling to be extracted from general rubbish.

What will we do with rubbish that isn't recycled? 

Technology to treat waste has been developing for many years and we are now in a position to take advantage of these technologies. 

We are developing a high-tech facility to treat the rubbish that isn't recycled in order to extract valuable resources from it. Fuel, compost, building materials, electricity and heat can all be created by treating rubbish, for example.

The partnership has been awarded £73.5m of PFI  funding to go towards the development of a waste treatment facility. We are looking for the most efficient, innovative and sustainable system, taking into account environmental impact, deliverability of the system and cost. Eight leading green energy and waste management companies have now been shortlisted for the project. 

For further information about waste read our FAQs