Waste
Joint Municipal Waste Strategy
The future of waste in Gateshead, Sunderland and South Tyneside.
How we manage our waste is a critical issue. Continuing to throw away our rubbish costs money, is a loss of valuable resources and has a damaging effect on our environment.
The South Tyne and Wear Waste Management Partnership, made up of Gateshead, Sunderland City and South Tyneside councils, is working together to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill sites every year.
We have already consulted with the public and business community to develop a Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy. The consultation involved contacting over 30,000 people, collecting 1000 questionnaires and holding 30 partnership meetings to inform the strategy.
We know we can't continue to send waste to landfill and our local residents recognise that. We have set a target to increase recycling across the three councils to 50 per cent by 2020, but that will still leave an estimated 185,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste to be disposed of.
We have applied to Defra for financial support to fund the development of waste management facilities. Defra has asked us to work out the costs for the best performing solutions, even though these may not be the ones that are decided upon in the end. Defra's PFI funding is just one of the options available to us and we will be exploring others.
