Recycling ‘rockets’ in Magherafelt

The district generates around 25,000 tonnes of waste, 21,500 of this is household waste, the remaining 3,500 comes from business, commercial and construction industries.

Landfill sites are expensive to maintain and increasingly difficult to site unless far from homes as local residents object to the foul odours, vermin and flies which accompany the vast dumps.

Thanks to a raft of initiatives put in to place by the council over the past decade recycling has grown from 5-10 per cent to about 60pc today.

This is the highest household recycling rate in Northern Ireland and means that the council is already meeting all the waste recycling and division targets for 2012-13 and beyond to 2020.