All local authorities could be forced to build incinerators to deal with the country's growing waste mountain, a Midland council has warned.

Warwickshire County Council is planning to create an #80 million incinerator to deal with 200,000 tonnes of its waste.

Kalen Ward, of the council's waste management department, said it was likely other local authorities would have to follow suit with the amount of rubbish increasing nationally by three per cent each year.

She said the council would also favour charging residents who throw away too much waste in a bid to deal with the problem, but local authorities were unable to enforce such action without a change in central Government policy.

The council has unveiled its plans to deal with the county's waste for the next 15 years, following fears waste dumps are filling up.

In the next seven years all of the available landfill sites will be full, forcing the council to either look for more available sites or choose other controversial options such as incineration.

Other areas already using incinerators include Coventry, Birmingham, Dudley, Stoke-on-Trent and Wolverhampton.

Warwickshire's plans have angered environmentalists, who claim local authorities with incinerators have poor recycling rates because they need the waste to keep the plants going.

Keith Kondakor, of Nuneaton Friends of the Earth, said: "They are planning for waste to double and they are building an incinerator so big that when we make twice as much waste the incinerator will be at full capacity but if waste doesn't double you have built a white elephant."

He said Coventry and Solihull Waste Disposal Company, which operated at a loss of nearly #39,000 last year, had to import waste from Warwickshire and Herefordshire to keep the plant going.

Asked if other local authorities will choose incineration to deal with future waste, Ms Ward said: "I think they probably will.

"They are certain authorities taking political decisions not to go down that route but also authorities which have not come up with clear options about what to do.

"It is a problem, waste is growing and it is very difficult to predict from one year to the next whether waste is going to increase or decrease.

"We estimate a three per cent growth every year and we are running out of landfill sites and we haven't got a limitless supply.

"The Government has set challenging targets to divert biodegradable waste away from landfill and if we don't make allowances we will be fined. Over the years, we have become a throwaway society and you only have to go to the supermarket to see all the packaging.

"We don't tend to repair things any more - we just throw it away and buy a new one. In Warwickshire, with the trend for flat screen TVs we had a lot of widescreen televisions thrown away."

Warwickshire deals with nearly 300,000 tonnes of waste each year at a cost of #18.4 million. In 2004/05 there was a seven per cent rise in rubbish collected.

As well as incineration, it hopes to recycle up to 45 per cent of all household waste by 2010.

A Government official has already indicated support for incineration in a bid to divert more rubbish away from

landfills to meet EU targets. Neil Thornton, director of environmental quality and waste at Defra, said the Government's waste strategy would see a greater focus on energy-from-waste initiatives.

An environmental charity has raised concerns about plans to build an incinerator in Warwickshire.

Forum for the Future, which was founded by Government adviser Jonathon Porritt and is a sustainable development charity, praised the local authority for its plans on recycling but said it was concerned that incineration may be superseded by more sustainable in the future.

Commenting on the waste strategy, it said: "The waste strategy has the potential to contribute positively to delivering sustainable development by using the waste hierarchy as a framework and seeking to exceed statutory composting and recycling targets.

"However, we still have reservations on the decision to proceed with an energy-from-waste plant, subject to final consultation.

"Warwickshire may put in place a facility which has a long life span and could be superseded by other technologies, which whilst not proven now, may be in the near future."