Wiltshire will soon be recycling almost all of the waste produced by residents after plans for a new £15m waste treatment plant got the go-ahead this week.

The Wiltshire County Council regulatory committee approved the plans for the mechanical biological treatment plant, which will be built on the Northacre Industrial Estate, Westbury, at a meeting yesterday.

The plant will remove more than 45,000 tonnes of west Wiltshire rubbish from landfill every year, and will include a £1m household recycling centre.

Alan Pardoe, chairman of Hills Group, who are county’s waste and recycling contractor, said: “We are delighted by today’s decision. This plant is a key element of Wiltshire’s overall war on waste and means that we can look forward to the day when at least 85 per cent of the county’s waste can be diverted from landfill. It adds up to a much more sustainable future.”

Wiltshire County Council’s operations service director Tracey Carter said: “The plan is to deliver 60,000 tonnes a year to the plant where it would go through a process of accelerated composting.

“The intention is to manufacture fuel from the output and Hills were negotiating to sell that fuel to the Lafarge cement works.

“Obviously the mothballing of Lafarge impacts on this contract so we are working with Hills to look at alternatives.”

At the moment about 42 per cent of all household waste in Wiltshire is recycled, which puts Wiltshire in the top quarter of ‘green’ councils in the UK.

Wiltshire Council’s new director of environmental services, George Batten, said: “When you think that five, six or seven years ago recycling wasn’t really very big, that’s a huge amount now.”

All recyclable waste collected by Hills is currently taken to its plant at Lower Compton near Calne where it is put in bundles and shipped to different mills where it can be turned into a useable product. The new plant will mean an estimated saving of around 100,000 lorry miles, as west Wiltshire rubbish will no longer be transported to the Lower Compton site.

Hills Group hope the plant, which has been contested by nearby residents and businesses, will be operational by 2011.