Leftovers from your Sunday lunch could be recycled and sold at a multi-million pound organic waste composting plant being considered by councils in Oxfordshire.

The facility, which would probably be built near Oxford, would effectively be a large shed where the county's garden, kitchen and cardboard waste would be stored, heated and matured before being sold as grade A compost.

The idea has captured the imagination of councillors to such an extent that a delegation has already visited one of the first food composting facilities in the country.

Oxfordshire Waste Partnership, representatives from the five district councils and the county council, is due to meet on Thursday (January 26) to discuss the 'in-vessel' composting plant in Harefield, Middlesex, which turns food and garden waste into organic fertiliser. In 2004 the county council, which is responsible for waste disposal, began considering waste treatments it could use from 2009/10.

By that time the authority needs to cut the amount of biodegradable waste to 75 per cent of that landfilled in 1995 -- and incin- eration has not been ruled out.

Oxford city councillor John Tanner, executive member for the environment, said: "In-vessel composting is the future for Oxford and much better than schemes which end up incinerating waste." The Harefield plant, which cost about £2.5m to build, can process 40,000 tonnes of organic waste each year including food, garden and cardboard.

It takes waste from the London boroughs of Hillingdon, Harrow and Brent and Hertfordshire County Council.

Andrew Wood, of Oxford Friends of the Earth, said: "Composting food waste using in-vessel composting is one of the ways in which we could reach high recycling rates of 75 per cent by 2015."

Green city and county councillor Craig Simmons added: "Composting food and garden waste is a way of turning it into an asset not a liability. The county council seems content to put all our refuse in a big incinerator -- that really is a waste."