The UK is on the brink of a waste disposal crisis and both the public and government are to blame, according to a report.

The Institution of Civil Engineers has warned that new ways of dealing with rubbish have to be developed and operational by 2020 if the country is to avoid a waste disposal crisis.

In its assessment of the state of the UK’s infrastructure, the ICE says that public animosity and protests about proposed waste burning sites are preventing the introduction of desperately-needed facilities.

Civil engineers said the waste sector is in danger of becoming a ticking bomb. With some 430 million tonnes of waste generated in the UK last year and each year growing by 3-5%, the problem is not going to go away they report.

Calling Britain’s waste sector the “Cinderella of the nation’s infrastructure”, the engineers said time is running out for the government to do something about the public animosity to new proposals and to develop a unified waste policy from the 72 separate existing initiatives.

A series of new regulations means that the cheap option of landfill – disposal into holes in the ground – is no longer a long-term option for local authorities.

The most effective solution to waste disposal, say the engineers, is the disposal of all types of waste into integrated sites that can manage them in one place, rather than having many specialist centres. Even so, it is estimated that over the next 16 years the UK will need between 1,500 and 2,300 new facilities to treat, recycle and dispose of our waste, and meet the requirements of the EU Landfill Directive.

If planning is not approved soon there will not be sufficient time to build and commission the processing plants and the engineers warn the likely shortfall of suitable facilities could lead to spiralling waste treatment costs as well as the risk of a growth in fly-tipping.

Already identified as a serious environmental hazard, fly-tipping is currently costing industry and council tax payers up to £150 million a year. The public needs to accept the necessity of new waste facilities or face an environment marred by an assortment of unprocessed waste, the report warns.

Private companies are constantly fighting an uphill battle against local government public pressure over the siting of plants. The report warns that an increasingly unprofitable waste industry sector will cease to be economically viable unless the public can be “… educated to allay their fears about the dangers of these facilities and understand that refusing them may lead to the much larger problem of millions of tonnes of rubbish with simply nowhere to go."