As the country increasingly turns away from landfill, the UK’s former dumps are being turned over to diverse nature reserves. For example, once one of Europe’s biggest landfill sites, Thurrock Thameside in Essex is now a nature park managed by Essex Wildlife Trust in partnership with other organisations including the RSPB. After 50 years of taking in waste from London’s homes, the regreened site now hosts some of the UK’s rarest species such as cuckoos, adders, water voles and the shrill carder bee.
Active landfill sites have reduced in the UK from circa 1,500 in the mid-1990s to around 250 today, thanks to the introduction of landfill tax by local councils, which means it is cheaper to incinerate non-recyclables than to dump them. Because much of the land occupied by those former landfill sites cannot be built on, it is frequently now found to be a scrubland home to endangered species pushed out of their traditional habitats by development. Of the 20,000 disused landfill sites in England, more than 1,300 are protected by an environmental designation, and some are even sites of special scientific interest.
Because the layer of land above the waste at these locations is too thin to allow for building works – and likewise cannot sustain trees – it is left as grassland or scrubland, hence the sites’ unexpected redemption as enablers of ecological regeneration and preservation at a time when pressure is growing to give over more greenbelt land to housing.
further reading…
As the country increasingly turns away from landfill, the UK’s former dumps are being turned over to diverse nature reserves. For example, once one of Europe’s biggest landfill sites, Thurrock Thameside in Essex is now a nature park managed by Essex Wildlife Trust in partnership with other organisations including the RSPB. After 50 years of taking in waste from London’s homes, the regreened site now hosts some of the UK’s rarest species such as cuckoos, adders, water voles and the shrill carder bee.
Active landfill sites have reduced in the UK from circa 1,500 in the mid-1990s to around 250 today, thanks to the introduction of landfill tax by local councils, which means it is cheaper to incinerate non-recyclables than to dump them. Because much of the land occupied by those former landfill sites cannot be built on, it is frequently now found to be a scrubland home to endangered species pushed out of their traditional habitats by development. Of the 20,000 disused landfill sites in England, more than 1,300 are protected by an environmental designation, and some are even sites of special scientific interest.
Because the layer of land above the waste at these locations is too thin to allow for building works – and likewise cannot sustain trees – it is left as grassland or scrubland, hence the sites’ unexpected redemption as enablers of ecological regeneration and preservation at a time when pressure is growing to give over more greenbelt land to housing.