No trace remains of the former Household Waste Recycling Centre (HWRC) at Hook, Warsash, following a restoration programme by Hampshire Waste Services, part of the Onyx Group, on behalf of Hampshire County Council. The clean up campaign is part of a wider programme of restoration by the waste recycling and management contractor of the adjacent landfill site, which closed in 1997.

Where cars once queued, householders stashed their trash, and recyclers brought their green garden trimmings and other unwanted items, now there is pasture land ready for grazing. All the concrete loading bays of the HWRC have been broken up and removed, new soils have been brought in, the grass seeded and the area stock-proofed fenced in readiness for grazing by cattle or sheep.

A total area covering 33 hectares of the former landfill site has been restored to agricultural land and will shortly be handed back to owners Hampshire County Council. The last of the landscaping will be complete once the final planting of woodland trees takes place during November.

It will leave just the natural residents on site - including a set of badgers who moved into the reserved topsoil at the end of the landfill area and have remained, and the yellow bartsia - a rare species of plant preserved in a small conservation area.

Hampshire Waste will continue its statutory monitoring duties on the site, controlling and managing the landfill gasses and leachate arising from the decomposition of the waste within the contained landfill.

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For further information contact:

Richard Bray, Hampshire Waste Services 01962 764000