I read with interest the piece about the closure of the Harewood Whin landfill site and the role of Allerton Park in terms of waste processing (Landfill site to be a flower meadow, February 8).

I have visited Allerton Park. The most impressive aspect of the visit was the vast quantity of rubbish that goes through the site.

Maybe a compulsory visit to the site for all school children (maybe early on in secondary school) would give them some insight into the fallacy of ‘throwing things away’: there is no place called ‘away’.

In the case of York, it’s called Allerton Park and the smell alone would convince anyone that there is something wrong about this level of waste.

City of York Council has a contract with Allerton Park to provide a certain amount of waste for processing. The plant depends on that and cannot operate efficiently without it.

So how does that provide an incentive for reducing waste?

And we shouldn’t forget that even though the amount of solid residue that arises from the process is much less in volume than landfill, it is still a solid residue and it is toxic. And that, too, has to be stored somewhere.

Martina Weitsch,

Smithie Close,

New Earswick, York