Blogger: Jenny Julian, Regional Development Officer
Did you know that homes in Norfolk throw away enough waste every year to cover the Carrow Road football pitch to a depth of 25m? Equivalent in height to two and a half double decker buses! Did you know that the UK buries more than 18 tonnes of household waste each year; that’s two million tonnes more than any other EU country? And did you know that in less than 8 years time there will be no room left for landfill waste in the UK?
Sounds pretty, well rubbish! But it’s not all doom and gloom. For every tonne of waste that a landfill operator buries a tax is paid and by 2014 this will be at least £80 per tonne. The aim of taxing landfill operators is to reduce the amount of rubbish that heads to landfill sites, encouraging more recycling and composting. So what’s this got to do with the RSPB? Well, the landfill operators can choose to pay a percentage of this tax to environmental bodies, such as WREN, the SITA Trust and Biffaward, who then distribute the money to worthy environmental causes that are affected by landfill sites.
This is where the RSPB comes in. Back in January 2011 the fundraisers in the east of England office were working hard on applications to the WREN Biodiversity Action Fund. The fund provides between £75,000 and £250,000 to projects that benefit biodiversity. Seven months later we found out that our two applications to the fund had been successful. Between them, our reserves at Freiston Shore, Frampton Marsh, Ouse Fen, Ouse Washes and Sutton Fen, have received £377,664 from the fund.
The work at Sutton Fen, in the Broads, is centred on the nationally rare habitat, lowland fen. The WREN money will pay for the reserves’ next five years worth of work on the habitat. Sutton Broad also holds the largest remaining UK population of fen orchid – a critically endangered species, found on only four fen sites in the UK! The WREN money will be paying for vital research into this orchid. Without this research the fen orchid could become extinct in the UK.
The four other reserves can be found in the Cambridgeshire Fens and the Wash. The focus habitat for this project is coastal and floodplain grazing marsh, another nationally rare habitat - important for species like lapwing and black-tailed godwit. The funding will support our work on this habitat for the next four years and work has already begun at Ouse Fen, where ex-arable land is being converted back to floodplain grazing marsh.
Every year a huge chunk of our funding comes from the Landfill Communities Fund, so it really isn’t that rubbish after all!
Photo credit: Andy Hay (rspb images)