Our landfills could be full in just four years as waste continues to pile up

England's landfill sites will burst their banks in as little as four years if nothing is done to stem the flow of waste being sent there.
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With enough waste to fill over 54,000 Olympic swimming pools being dumped each year - 45.4 million tonnes - and only enough space for 175.1 million tonnes of waste left in total, a crisis is imminent.

Read: What to do with your old poppy? How to recycle your poppyEnough waste to fill the Empire State building ten times over was packed into the ground in 2017. If this continues, landfill will be overflowing with nowhere else for waste to go by 2022.

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The country will reach crisis point soon if there isn’t an immediate focus on the recycling of bulkier waste streams which are difficult to compress and take up a huge amount of landfill space.

Englands landfill sites will burst their banks in as little as four yearsEnglands landfill sites will burst their banks in as little as four years
Englands landfill sites will burst their banks in as little as four years

Over 1.6 million tonnes of bulky waste is sent to landfill every year and furniture and mattresses account for 42 percent of this.

An analysis by The Furniture Recycling Group (TFR Group) has found an estimated 7.5 million mattresses being dumped into the ground across the country each year.

Read: Brewing up change: How we can make cask beer sales flow againTFR Group is currently one of the only firms in the UK tackling the bulky waste problem head on, recycling an incredible 338,000 mattresses each year.

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Nick Oettinger, managing director of TFR Group, said: “I cannot stress enough the severity of the issue now facing the country. This spells disaster for future generations, who now face the horrifying prospect of seeing precious green space piled high with decaying mountains of mattresses and other waste that simply cannot be disposed of properly.”

Enough waste to fill over 54,000 Olympic swimming poolsis being dumped each yearEnough waste to fill over 54,000 Olympic swimming poolsis being dumped each year
Enough waste to fill over 54,000 Olympic swimming poolsis being dumped each year

The benefits of tackling bulky waste extend far beyond preventing a landfill crisis. If just 50 percent of the mattresses currently being discarded were made up of recycled materials, CO2 emissions from the waste stream would be reduced by 34 percent and 85,000 tonnes of raw materials would be saved every year.

Nick said: “There are a number of promising solutions, but the country needs to heed this warning now and transform its recycling processes before the dangerously limited time runs out.”