Burning tyres has helped reduced pollution from the Rugby Cement plant, the Environment Agency has said.

And it has this week given Cemex permission to increase the amount of tyres it burns from 6t an hour to 10tph hour on a trial basis for the next six months. It equates to 40 per cent of the plant’s power.

David Hudson, the agency’s environment manager, said despite some public concern about the ongoing trials figures had continually showed they had contributed to a reduction in the amount of oxides of nitrogen.

"This trial has shown that using waste to produce energy will have a lower environmental impact both in terms of air quality and by reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill," he added.

Cemex has been making efforts to reduce its use of fossil fuels to power the cement plant and is also currently carrying out a trial of Climafuel - unrecyclable household waste.

Company spokesman Ian Southcott said: "The principal for Rugby is that Climafuel is what we believe is the future as it stops waste going to landfill," he added.

"We will always have to use a percentage of fossil fuels, but we would like to minimise it, and Climafuel and tyres are key to that."

Source: Rugby Observer