A proposal to close a Caerphilly recycling centre in 2020-21 could generate £15,000.
Caerphilly County Borough Council announced its draft budget proposals for 2020-21 last month, which included cuts of more than £8 million.
As part of the draft budget proposals, the council plans to close Trehir Household Waste Recycling Centre (HWRC) in Llanbradach.
Closing Trehir HWRC would generate savings of £30,000 on running costs including maintenance.
However, a report on the environment and sustainability savings proposals says it would not close until Penalta HWRC has been expanded. This would make it a part-year saving of £15,000 in 2020-21.
The report says an increase in capacity at Penallta HWRC would be necessary to make sure that there is no decrease in disposal space.
Trehir HWRC currently accounts for around 22% of the tonnage of waste received by all six HWRCs, making an expansion to an alternative site necessary.
Early indications say that an expansion to the Penallta site could cost the council £600,000.
Travel for residents in Caerphilly to alternative sites is expected to fall within the waste and resources action programme (WRAP) standard travel time threshold of 20 minutes.
Caerphilly currently has six recycling centres, more than six of its seven neighbouring authorities. Only Rhondda Cynon Taf has more.
The WRAP guidelines say that there must be a maximum of 120,000 people per HWRC.
In Caerphilly there is currently one for every 30,333 people and closing the Trehir site would only increase this by 6,000.
The savings proposal report says: “It is important to note that whilst the proposal reduces the number of sites, the storage and disposal capacities for the public will be retained.
“The redeployment of staff from Trehir to our retained HWRCs will enhance the support that we are able to offer site users in recycling rather than disposing of materials.
“Concerns are often raised regarding the potential for increased flytipping should HWRC provision be reduced.
“However, flytipping is against the law and the need to travel further to access an HWRC is no justification for committing environmental crime.”
The environment and scrutiny committee will consider the proposal at a meeting on Tuesday (December 10).