Both Cllr Waddington and GlosVAIN agree that Gloucestershire cannot keep sending its waste to landfill.

However, the two parties disagree on the technology which should be used to solve the county’s waste problem.

The way New Earth Solutions disposes of waste at its Avonmouth site, using an MBT facility in combination with a gassification plant, is preferred by GlosVAIN.

Members of the group say that incineration is old technology and that New Earth Solutions’ service is more up to date, better for the environment and less of a threat to human health.

The group has been particularly angered by Cllr Waddington’s public statements about the Avonmouth facility because they feel that he is trying to discredit the technology as an alternative to incineration.

Cllr Waddington has repeatedly said that almost three quarters of the waste processed by New Earth Solutions in its MBT facility is transferred abroad for incineration or sent to landfill.

Technically this is true, but importantly he fails to mention that this is only a stopgap solution while work on the gassification plant at Avonmouth is completed.

As soon as the plant is up and running – expected to be around Spring 2013 – it will process all of the waste currently shipped abroad.

Indeed, the waste processed in the MBT facility will travel on a conveyor belt straight into the new gassification plant.

By omitting this fact from his statements, Cllr Waddington is failing to provide the full picture and therefore misleading the public, GlosVAIN say.

Indeed, his perceived misrepresentation of New Earth’s activities has now even prompted the company’s managing director to write to him, requesting that he ‘cease repeating incorrect statements’.

New Earth Solutions acknowledge that MBT alone is not sufficient for dealing with household waste.

The addition of the gassification plant ‘is key to the whole solution’ offered at Avonmouth, a company spokesman said.

Yet Cllr Waddington has consistently neglected to mention this, portraying the Avonmouth operation as an unsuitable solution for Gloucestershire’s waste problem – this is what has so infuriated GlosVAIN.