A FORMER landfill site is set to become a garden waste recycling unit which could save a council around £100,000 a year.

The Joints Stocks site, in Coxhoe, was a landfill site for about 40 years but is now set to become a composting unit, which would be run by Durham County Council.

The authority already owns the site, which was previously operated by Premier Waste Management.

The council has applied for planning permission to recommence composting operations, which it says will save it around £100,000 a year.

Currently the council spends up to £450,000 a year to use commercial composting companies to deal with about 17,000 tonnes of garden waste picked up through its kerbside collection service.

Their statement says: “The council is seeking to reduce its overall operating costs and is therefore proposing to compost the garden waste collected by the in-house service at its existing composting pad at joint stocks.

“It is calculated that composting this garden waste in-house will make savings in excess of £100,000 a year.”

The facility was previously used for commercial composting operations by Premier Waste Management, which built the pad at the south west corner of the site about 18 years ago.

The company had permission to compost up to 100,000 tonnes of garden waste, but planning permission for the operation expired in 2014.

The council is seeking to compost up to 25,000 tonnes of garden waste a year. Environmental permits for the operation are still in place.

Approval is sought to carry out composting on the pad at Joint Stocks for the 2019 composting season, between mid March and early November

The council adds: “Wherever possible the finished product will be used in-house by the council (e.g. on grounds maintenance and construction works) and be made available to community groups however it is likely that much of the material will be disposed of in bulk agreements with local farmers or ground work construction companies.”

The council runs its collection service from Tuesday to Friday, for 34 weeks between March and November. It has 10 26-tonne wagons, which deliver garden waste to composters up to twice a day,

It is envisaged the Coxhoe site would receive up to 70 per cent of deliveries directly by collection wagons, with the remainder going to transfer stations and material transported to Joint Stocks by articulated wagon.

It would mean the site getting 2,250 deliveries a year, with around 1,000 journeys needed to take product off site, amounting to about nine vehicle movements a day.