This is the first image of a controversial waste transfer station for which, council officers say, there is no alternative.

A French industrial architect has drawn up plans for the building at Hollingdean, Brighton, which would cost £10 million.

Recycling lorries would leave the depot, collect waste and then return.

They would drive into the building, where its load of recyclables is sorted for transfer to recycling companies outside the city.

Night-time dustbin collections and a convoy of lorries carrying Brighton and Hove's waste to the Midlands for dumping could be the only alternative to a controversial waste transfer site at Hollingdean, say officials.

Gillian Marston, the head of Brighton and Hove City Council's in-house refuse service Cityclean, said the council had no other options to deal with the city's waste.

If the planned waste transfer station was not built, she said, there would have to be night time collections with convoys of dustcarts heading north.

Ms Marston, assistant director of Cityclean, is in charge of the team which collects and dumps the city's waste.

At present, dustcarts come in and out of the Hollingdean site in Brighton collecting waste and carrying it to landfills in Sussex, which will be full in the next two years.

Ms Marston said she had been wracking her brains to find an alternative. She said: "I've been looking at where we could take our waste if we don't have a transfer site. We could be going as far as Bedford or even the Midlands."

Ms Marston said the trip would take about eight hours, which would mean the council would have to collect refuse at night and transfer it in articulated lorries to the Midlands during the day by another crew.

This would mean more staff, more trucks and more cost and a large increase in the number of vehicles coming in and out of the Hollingdean refuse depot.

Ms Marston said: "This could block the roads across the country. It would be madness, an absolute disaster."

Hampshire, which includes coastal cities such as Portsmouth, has three incinerators to deal with its county's waste.

Ms Marston said Cityclean looked at using Hampshire to deal with Brighton and Hove's waste but the firm would have had to buy a large fleet of vehicles to transport the daily amount of refuse.

The average journey would take six hours and Cityclean's 20 vehicles would have to be bolstered to 114 vehicles, which the service thought too expensive and would create more traffic.

Gareth Reast, of Hollingbury Road, Brighton, who is fighting the waste site plans, said : "What needs to be kept in mind is the waste local plan has not yet been adopted. It's still in consultation.

"I think this is an over-reaction to say that everything will have to go away to be dumped elsewhere. It's a silly statement. There are alternatives."

However, Ms Marston said even if the council did transport its waste from the city, those alternative landfills would also become full and costs to take it out of the county would soar.

The amount of waste being generated annually is growing at three per cent per year and the South-East is running out of landfill.

Keith Mitchell, who is the chairman of the South East England Regional Assembly's regional planning committee, said: "We are running out of landfill sites, and few people want a new landfill site near them. Secondly, the waste of resources is not sustainable. We are using raw materials too quickly."

Ms Marston said the city has to have a materials recovery facility and waste transfer station and Hollingdean Lane, Brighton, is the ideal site because of its proximity to the dustcart depot.

She said having several smaller transfer sites dotted about the city would increase traffic movement with dustcarts and waste transfer lorries travelling all over the city.