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It’s a Rubbish Footprint

© EDINA at University of Edinburgh 2013This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non-Commercial License

(2007) UK ‘landfill dustbin of Europe’

• The UK dumps more household waste into landfill than any other country in the European Union, research by the Local Government Association shows.

• UK households sent 22.6 million tonnes of rubbish to landfill in 2004/5 – the most recent year for which comparable figures are available across the EU.

12 November 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7089963.stm

(2009) Waste not: recession leads to big drop in amount of rubbish we are throwing away

Households are consuming less and recycling more, according to the latest official figures.

‘We collected 4.5 per cent less waste in the last year,

which is 7,000 fewer tonnes of rubbish’

said Mark Banks, waste strategy manager for Westminster City Council. ‘This is common across the whole of Greater London – local authorities are reporting between a 3 per cent and 10 per cent drop in waste collection,’ he said.http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/waste-not-recession-leads-to-big-drop-in-amount-of-rubbish-we-are-throwing-away-1682289.html Sunday 10 May 2009

The Problem with landfill

• In 2007/08, people in Oxfordshire produced around 300,000 tonnes of household rubbish. That is half a tonne of rubbish for every person in the county. Put it all on a football pitch and it would be 1,600 feet high – the same as 110 double decker buses stacked on top of each other.

Rubbish and fly tipping fires cost £16 million to tackle

Rubbish fires are costing taxpayers millions of pounds a year, according to the Scottish Fire Service.

Most fires involving rubbish and fly tipping last year were started deliberately.

Its latest figures showed there were 7,937 blazes involving refuse and fly-tipping in 2012/13, with almost 90% started deliberately.

The cost of dealing with these fires was about £15.9 million.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-24709221 October 23 2013

If a million household produce a square kilometre of rubbish a week between them, all the households in Great Britain would produce about 26 Km²

This is what goes to landfill each week – where would you put it?

This is what a year’s worth of rubbish from Great Britain households might look like.