GOING green and recycling more will mean local parks and amenities in Central Fife will miss out on millions of pounds in funding.

Operators of rubbish dumps have been passing on landfill tax credits to be spent in our towns and villages – more than £11m in the Kingdom over 20 years – but the cash is set to dry up.

Sending waste to landfill in Scotland will be banned from 2021, which means the tax credits distributed by Fife Environment Trust will eventually run out and leave projects short of funding.

Paul Vaughan, the council's head of communities and neighbourhoods, said: "The move away from landfill by 2021 towards more sustainable waste management practices will have a direct negative impact on the level of landfill tax credits received by Fife Environment Trust.

"The fund will therefore draw to a point of closure with communities no longer benefitting from their proximity to landfill sites and waste transfer stations."

The environmental changes will adversely affect the Scottish Communities Landfill Fund, a scheme linked to Scottish Landfill Tax that encourages landfill site operators to contribute tax credits to benefit community and environmental projects.

Fife Environment Trust, a charity set up in 1997, receives the landfill tax credits from FRS and distributes them as grant contributions.

The community groups receiving the money must spend it on improvements to parks or public amenities, biodiversity enhancement projects or the restoration of listed buildings and historic structures.

In 19 years, the trust contributed over £9.6m for projects that had a total cost of more than £40.5m.

Since 2015, when a Scottish scheme replaced the UK scheme, it has committed £1.5m for 51 projects, including £45,000 for the Brunton Square Heritage Garden in Cowdenbeath, £8,969 for Loch Leven's wetland wildlife and £4,289 for the Lochore Meadows coppice.

Mr Vaughan added: "This is a significant investment in community projects which would not otherwise be able to be delivered."

A further 21 applications were received by the trust by the end of March, looking for grants totalling more than £860,000.

The Waste Regulations (Scotland) 2012 includes a ban on sending biodegradable municipal waste to landfill and the council chief explained: "Fife Resource Solutions (FRS run the council's landfill sites for them) advises that the trust can expect income to remain relatively static for the next 18 months, beyond which the income level will take a rapid and sudden decrease as the landfill ban of 2021 approaches."

There is currently just over £800,000 in the trust's pot and Mr Vaughan said: "While the level of funding is expected to reduce significantly over the next few years, in the meantime the trust will continue to work with local organisations to promote the funding available."