HAS waste become an election winner? A shock Labour victory in a Worcester City Council by-election was recently attributed to a load of rubbish - or, more specifically, the importance of the wheelie bins issue to St Clement's voters.

If that is true, then local politicians must be looking closely at their bins. After all, the result saw the Conservatives lose their majority at the Guildhall.

A few miles away, the recycling debate has also been hotting up in Wychavon as councillors prepare to decide whether to adopt an alternate weekly' system - otherwise known as wheelie bins.

In light of the renewed interest in waste, your Worcester News was invited to the Hill and Moor waste site to see first-hand the consequences of ignoring the growing waste mountain.

It was a visit full of surprises. Not least, I met self-confessed waste nerd' Mark Edwards, a waste management officer for Wychavon, who explained he found waste a fascinating subject.

Perhaps most shocking, an hour later I found myself agreeing with him.

Why was driving over a huge pile of rubbish so interesting? I don't know. But it was and excellent fun too. A little bit like a jeep safari but smellier when you are downwind.

On the way up, I discovered that every night a layer of soil is spread across the top of rubbish which has earlier been crushed down by large compactors.

That has to be done so the rubbish is not open to flies and means the mound is made up of layers of waste and earth until the tip's optimum height is reached.

In Hill and Moor's case that is 57 metres high, a total calculated so the site does not stand out unduly in the surrounding countryside.

Once Hill and Moor is at capacity, it will eventually be transformed into a grassland or wetland with no obvious hint that this hill has a dirty secret.

Even now, the rubbish tip has its fair share of wildlife, including five types of seagull drawn irresistibly to this prime site.

As several of them are protected species, site managers have had to bring in a natural solution to keeping their numbers down: a peregrine falcon.

Falconer John Hemmings controls the female bird of prey with possibly the best job in the world - the freedom to do what she does best.

Apparently, she's very effective. As Mark puts it: "They get used to the scarers, but when they see the falcon they soon leave."

Inevitably, the piles of rotting rubbish also create methane - a fact that Wychavon's head of community services Phil Merrick believes contributes to climate change.

"There is a recognition that methane that comes out of sites like this will help that global impact," he says.

It's not all bad news though. On the way down, we pass what looks like a mini power station.

It turns out the site harnesses the methane - enough to power a town the size of Pershore - and uses it to run the site. The rest goes to the National Grid.

Of course, rubbish is only half the story at Hill and Moor. Recycling is now taking over much of the site and appears to be an ever more complex issue.

Recycling may be better for the environment than landfill, but it also throws up a whole new set of questions.

Not least of which is this: should we really be creating a whole recycling industry to deal with the plastics, paper and tins we are now virtuously saving up - or would we be better off avoiding using some of the materials in the first place?An election issue for the future perhaps.