Surrey has saved millions of pounds on its landfill tax bill by more than halving the amount of waste it buries in the ground.

In the three year period from 2007-08, the county council reduced the amount of waste it sent to landfill from 64 per cent to 33 per cent.

That effectively means that the county buried 200,000 tonnes less waste in 2010-11 than it did three years earlier.

Landfill tax cost £64 per tonne, so the county council would have to fork out £12.8m in taxes alone to bury that 200,000 tonnes of rubbish in the ground.

Councillor John Furey said: “We’ve taken great strides in reducing our reliance on landfill and our aim is to eliminate the use of it completely by 2014.

“It costs a lot of money and creates greenhouse gases which are bad for the environment.

“We’ll continue to help people reduce the amount of waste they produce and reuse or recycle as much as possible.”

He said the council would continue to work at removing its recycling rate.

The county aims to hit a 70 per cent recycling rate by 2014.