Maisie Lillywhite - BBC News, Gloucestershire and Mark Smith - BBC News, Gloucestershire

A campaigner has called for a halt to burning plastics after just under half of Gloucestershire's waste was incinerated last year.

The county recycled 52.9 percent of its waste in 2023, and the rest was burnt at the Javelin Park facility near Stonehouse.

County councillor David Grey said incineration is much better than the old method of sending rubbish in landfill, as the incinerator generates electricity.

Tom Jarman from Community R4C said it is "really important" a pre-sort facility is introduced to filter out plastics prior to burning.

In addition to generating power, the incineration of Gloucestershire's waste allows materials, such as metal and those used to build roads, to be extracted from it, Mr Grey, cabinet member responsible for environment, economy and planning, said.

Tom Jarman led the campaign against the incinerator a decade ago. While his campaign group, R4C, was unable to stop it from being built, he now wants to ensure it is as clean as possible.

"All of us can just focus on making sure that we do our recycling because it does make a difference," he said.

"Anything you put in your recycling won't end up in the incinerator, but in the medium term, it's really important that we put in a pre-sort facility.

"That means that we remove all plastic that will go into incineration, and that's very simple and easy to do."

Mr Grey said the economics of such a facility would need to be looked at, but he is "unconvinced" it would be sustainable.

"We believe that we've reduced the amount of waste substantially," he said.

"We do a much better job if we continue to focus on reducing the amount of plastic waste that are getting into the system in the first place through focusing on the generators and on our residents on their behaviours in terms of upping their recycling rates."