Of all the things councils get up to, dealing with rubbish is the one people get least excited about. At least, it used to be that way.

Because when coping with that rubbish means building incinerators, people living near earmarked sites really do take an interest - and turn the heat on the councils wanting to construct them.

Plans for two burners, at North Quay, Newhaven, and Mountfield Mine, near Robertsbridge, come a step closer next week when councillors meet to approve the second draft of waste plans.

East Sussex County Council, meeting on Tuesday, and Brighton and Hove City Council, meeting Thursday, are both expected to nod through the document.

The plans are not expected to be adopted until 2004, a year behind the original schedule.

The big stage where all this will be thrashed out remains a public inquiry, expected early next year.

The second draft contains some amendments prompted by the first, main consultation a year ago, which drew more than 16,000 responses.

Almost 90 per cent of comments were against building the two incinerators. But they are still in the plans.

Recycling targets however, have been altered: To 33 per cent by 2010, up from 30 per cent, and 40 per cent by 2015, up from 33 per cent.

David Rogers, who represents Newhaven on the council, told a recent Cabinet meeting people had genuine fears about incineration and there was anger the burners were still in the plans.

He said: "One might almost say these comments have been totally ignored. The only changes are extremely detailed ones."

The councils hotly deny any responses have been ignored but are going to have to go a long way if they are to win the battle of hearts and minds.

An independent forum set up by to investigate the plans and try to defuse public opposition said large mass-burn incinerators should be dropped.

The forum said the two energy-from-waste plants proposed could not form part of a long-term strategy and the recycling targets should be increased significantly. Some councils were already recycling 50 to 70 per cent of waste.

Incinerators have had a bad 12 months. At Byker, in Newcastle, the council and owner of a burner were fined £35,000 after admitting spreading toxic ash on allotments in the city. The ash was found to contain high levels of dioxins.

At the Edmonton incinerator in north London it was discovered toxic fly ash had been mixed with less dangerous bottom ash and used to build homes and roads.

Tests by the Environment Agency found minimal presence of dioxins, one of the most dangerous substances known to man.

When it was tested independently, it was found to have up to 20 times what the agency found.

Both instances were caused by failures by managers and regulators and do not prove incineration is unsafe.

But protesters in Sussex point out there is little to stop a repeat here.

The pro-incinerator lobby took comfort from a report by the Brighton-based National Society for Clean Air, which said the health effects of modern burners were negligible and emissions of harmful pollutants small compared with other sources.

The report did, however, say uncertainties remained about the mixture of chemicals being emitted and the effect on susceptible groups, such as unborn babies.

It also recommended strict monitoring of dioxin levels around working burners.

The society's deputy secretary, Tim Brown, said in some cases incinerators were the least-bad option and even if most waste was recycled, we would still have to dispose of the rest.

He said: "If they are worried about the health impact, basically any form of waste management has some form of health impact. Even if you recycle stuff, there is a health impact."

Landfill sites, where virtually all Sussex's rubbish gets dumped at the moment, came off no better.

Research had been published indicating pregnant women stood a greater chance of giving birth to children with abnormalities if they lived near a landfill site.

That something needs to be done is perhaps the only area where everybody agrees.

New figures published by the Environment Agency suggest all landfill sites in East and West Sussex will be full in four years at the present rate of filling.

And that four-year breathing space shows every sign of shrinking as the amount we throw away is increasing by about three per cent every year.

Defenders of the Ouse Valley and Estuary, the pressure group formed to fight the proposed Newhaven incinerator, is one of the organisations looking for solutions.

The group was instrumental in forming Zero Waste UK and organised Britain's first major conference on its ideas at the University of Sussex, this weekend.

Joelle van Tinteren said the waste industry believed it could deal with as much as 94 per cent of rubbish without incineration, although there was no short, simple answer.

She said the key was to split what would rot from what would not at home before it was collected.

Most organic waste could then be dealt with using technologies other than incineration What does not rot could be recycled or reused if we put our minds to it.

She said: "The plan needs rejigging basically. Business as usual is not a driver for progress."