The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) has warned that the government's pressure on local councils to recycle more waste could backfire.
A new report from the ICE finds that recycling targets focus too much on getting large quantities of waste down the conveyors, which is having an adverse effect on standards.
Poor-quality recycled materials, put through by councils without proper sorting beforehand, is often unusable for new goods and ends up having to be sent to landfill anyway.
The ICE's Jonathan Davies is now urging the government to do more to look at the quality of recyclable of material that is produced.
"Without this, the UK could generate increasingly poor-quality recycled materials for which there are few buyers, and ironically their most likely final destination is landfill," he said.
It was recently announced that the government recycling agency Wrap is to have its budget cut by 28 per cent in the next year, as part of the coalition's austerity measures.
Typical Guttridge equipment used in the recycling industry includes; elevators bucket elevators valves
