For as long as anyone can remember, household waste has been buried in landfill sites. However, it is not seen as the most sustainable solution for dealing with household waste.

The ethos for dealing with waste has completely changed in recent years, from being a material that presents the problem of how to treat it, to being a resource that has value.

Traditional "dustbin waste" has changed considerably over the years from a fairly stable and homogenous material in the 1950s and 1960s (large amounts of ash from fireplaces) to a more heterogeneous waste stream today (with large volumes of putrescible and plastic waste).

This means that landfill sites are much more biologically active nowadays as the waste food and other putrescibles break down in an oxygen- depleted environment.

The result is that landfill sites have greater pollution potential. The emphasis on dealing with waste nowadays is to extract as much value from it as possible.

In West Sussex, the solution, basically, is to separate the organic-rich fraction of the waste (i.e., waste food, kitchen waste etc.) from the inorganic fraction that has not been previously separated for recycling.

The organic waste will then be fed through an anaerobic digester that will turn this material into a soil conditioner and extract energy in the form of methane gas generated as part of the process.

The combustible inorganic fraction will be turned into fuel pellets that can be combusted in a cement kiln.

There will also be a process that removes further recyclables and material that can be disposed of only in landfill.

The new plant will be housed at Warnham, on the same site as a landfill.

While landfill will continue to be part of the equation, it is expected that far less material will need to be disposed of in this way.

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