IN the same week that we welcomed Hyndburn Council's plans to get us all to participate more actively in recycling, we learned of plans to extend the landfill site at Whinney Hill, Altham.

Hyndburn aims to fulfil a 25 per cent recycling target -- which Friends of the Earth thinks is more than achievable and certainly a huge improvement on the six per cent it currently achieves.

However, this makes the extension of a landfill site even more questionable, when councils are trying to move away from the landfill option of disposing of our waste.

What encouragement does it give to the residents of Hyndburn to use this new recycling scheme when 660,000 tonnes of everyone else's waste is going to be dumped on our doorstep if the proposed plans go ahead?

Already Whinney Hill receives waste from across the North West -- 300 lorries a day cause major traffic congestion along several principal roads. Residents quite rightly complain of flies, noxious odours, dust, seagulls and noise pollution from the site.

If the 'global scheme' is approved by county council then we can only expect things to get a lot worse. We are told that 725 lorries will now jam our roads. Residents' and road users' lives will become a misery.

Hyndburn will get not one benefit from the "global scheme." It will only bring detrimental environmental, health and transport effects.

Unlike some, though, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley Friends of the Earth do not subscribe to any possible alternative. Any proposed access off the M65 would not be in the Highway Agency's recommendations and any new road would cut through existing green belt land.

But, basically, however the waste arrived at the tip, it would add to all of the above-mentioned problems.

What really irks is that while Hyndburn Council is making positive strides to encourage recycling, we are being asked to take everybody else's waste! It's an outrage.

Why should we make an effort to recycle when waste from all over the North West, and further afield, is planned to be dumped on our doorstep?

For a better environment and better standard of living we must all oppose these proposed plans.

IAN DIXON (Hyndburn and Ribble Valley Friends of the Earth), Grange Street, Clayton-le-Moors.