LANCASTER Greens have hit out at county council chiefs saying a recent consultation document sent out to thousands of Lancashire households promotes burning household rubbish.

The row broke out after the document, titled "This is your waste - what do you think?", was circulated to homes across the district in response to new European laws restricting the amount of rubbish that can be landfilled.

But the Green Party say the document promotes the burning of waste because it is the "easy option" - despite being potentially dangerous to health.

They say at least 80per cent of waste should be being recycled and are urging the public to write to the council to support re-using of rubbish before the September 30th deadline.

Councillor Jon Barry, of Lancaster Green Party, said: "I am very worried that in response to Government restrictions on landfilling waste the County Council will pursue what is to them the easy option of simply burning it.

"There are grave risks to health with incineration, especially with cancers caused by dioxins from the incineration discharges.

"Current Government planning guidelines say that incinerators should be sited on industrial land within urban areas, so this could mean an incinerator sited very near to large numbers of people in Lancaster, Morecambe or Heysham."

The environmentalists also say that the council's claim that recycling would cost £150 a tonne is misleading - and that current recycling schemes can be started at £50 a tonne or even less. The new laws which prompted the consultation state that landfilling of rubbish must be cut from its current 85% to 75% by 2010 and to 35 per cent by 2020.

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