THE blueprint to deal with household rubbish until 2015 has been labelled "pathetic".

Stop Kidderminster Incinerator's (SKI) Clare Cassidy said the outline Worcestershire County Council plan - due to be voted on by the cabinet today - neglected recycling and championed incineration.

Last summer a proposed burner at Kidderminster's British Sugar site was thrown out by a planning inspector.

Miss Cassidy said SKI was "fairly confident" the county would not propose another incinerator for the district but added the group would fight such plants wherever they were proposed.

The document, which, if approved, will form the basis of the county's first Waste Local Plan, aims for a minimum of 33 per cent of rubbish to be recycled, a maximum 22 per cent to go to landfill and the rest being thermally treated.

It stated a "form of thermal treatment facility in central Worcestershire" will be needed.

"Everyone knows that thermal treatment is a euphemism for incineration," said Miss Cassidy.

"We need a programme of waste management where public support for waste reduction and recycling drives the process. Sadly the county council lacks the vision to initiate such a strategy and seems determined to ignore the concerns of ordinary people about the risks of incineration."

She also attacked the public consultation exercise which featured 1,010 written and e-mailed responses and said the county planned to rely on technologies to deal with waste that had not yet been fully developed.

The county's principal planner Mark Bishop said the document contained "realistic figures" and thermal treatment included developing technologies such as gasification and pyrolysis.

"We don't want a plan adopted which precludes looking at alternative technologies," he said.

He stressed the county was committed to recycling but said there would always be residual waste to be disposed of and landfill was increasingly seen as bad for the environment.

He added the consultation also consisted of canvassing views from district and town councils, campaign groups and a "citizen's panel".