SWINDON taxpayers could face a bill of more than £28 million if the council does not improve the town's recycling facilities over the next 15 years.

Swindon Council will face huge penalties in 2020 if it does not meet targets set by the European Union to landfill only 35 per cent of its biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) and the penalties will be passed on to Swindonians through council tax.

BMW means biodegradable paper and food waste that can easily be recycled and diverted from landfills.

Swindon, which currently recycles only 15 per cent of its waste, is currently coming up with a strategy to meet the stiff targets. This is compared to Wiltshire County Council, which already recycles 25 per cent of its rubbish.

Options that the council are looking at include trying to urge Swindonians to minimise their rubbish, introducing a Swindon-wide doorstep collection of recyclable goods, and even the possibility of incinerators, or waste to energy plants as they are now known, as a way of diverting waste from landfills.

The Government introduced the targets under the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme to fulfil the EC Landfill Directive brought in by Brussels.

Each local authority has to reduce the amount of BMW landfilled by 25 per cent in 2010, by 50 per cent in 2013, and 65 per cent in 2020. Each council will be fined £200 for each tonne they go over the target in each of those years.

Swindon Council is predicting its waste will increase by four per cent every year.

If nothing is done and the amount of waste increases as predicted, Swindon will face fines of around £5.5 million in 2010, £9 million in 2013 and £14.2 million in 2020, a total of £28.7 million.

Recycling officer Andrew Cook said: "We are working on a draft strategy to cover the period up to 2020 to make sure that we don't incur these fines.

"There are other ways of diverting waste from landfill other than recycling and one of those is waste minimisation and even incineration. We are looking at every option.

"Obviously, our intention is to make sure that we don't incur any of these fines and we will be working very hard to make sure this doesn't happen. To do this we need the people of Swindon to realise how important it is to recycle and to minimise their waste."

At the moment, Swindon currently carries out a doorstep recycling collection from 35,000 homes. It has still not been decided when this initiative will be increased to encompass the whole of the town.

The council, which has recently opened a new recycling centre at Cheney Manor, was unable to confirm when the new strategy to tackle the landfill targets will be completed.

Jamie Hill