Environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth has warned Oxfordshire County Council it faces a fierce public backlash if it builds waste incinerators.

County Hall says no decision has been made, but last year the authority's cabinet accepted the findings of a waste review which en- dorsed incineration as the way forward.

Later this year the council will have to table its options for the future and consult.

But environmental activists claim there is no way the authority could build and operate an incinerator by 2010, which is when new waste treatment for Oxfordshire is supposed to start.

Recent plans by Surrey County Council, where former Oxfordshire County Council chief executive Richard Shaw is now in charge, to plant an incinerator on the outskirts of Guildford prompted 80,000 people to protest.

Andrew Wood, of Oxford Friends of the Earth, said: "I am sure there would be opposition, there's no doubt about that and in any area where an incinerator could go there would be an outcry.

"We need high rates of recycling and composting -- 50 per cent by 2010 and 75 per cent by 2015 to reduce the amount of waste for disposal.

"The county council's own consultants say the remainder can be treated with alternative waste treatments like mechanical biological treatment, which are both cost effective, produce less climate change and are less polluting than incineration."

Councils in Newhaven, in East Sussex, Norwich, Mansfield, Hull, Cornwall, Peterborough, Leeds, York, Woking and Nuneaton are all currently considering plans for incinerators.

The UK is near the bottom of the European league table of recycling with just 17 per cent of waste recycled in 2003/04 compared to 53 per cent in Germany and 70 per cent in Belgium.

About 230,000 tonnes of the 315,000 tonnes of rubbish produced in Oxfordshire every year is buried at four landfill sites at Ardley, Sutton Courtenay, Stanton Harcourt and Alkerton, near Banbury.

Failure to reduce this figure to 60,000 by 2009 could mean the county council being fined up to £150 for every tonne over its quota.

Oxford City Council this week agreed to start a wheelie bin scheme from October with the aim of boosting recycling levels in the city.

Labour county councillor Terry Joslin, who headed the council's waste scrutiny review last year, said: "We are at the point in this country where our domestic waste is soon to be considered as a 'renewable' energy source and it will be freed from taxes.

"Incineration will make it highly economic, solve a disposal problem and generate 25 per cent of the nation's base-load power -- which is darn sight more than windmills will ever do."