The director of a Horfield-based recycling firm has been fined £2,200 for allowing a rubbish mountain to envelop his premises.

Steven Pearce-Lynch appeared at Bristol Crown Court for sentencing after admitting nine charges of flouting his recycling licence in a case brought by the Environment Agency.

The court heard how Pearce-Lynch allowed the site of Ashley Waste Recycling Limited become literally full to bursting with waste.

Imposing sentence, The Honourable Mr Justice Raymond Jack told him: "The gravity of your offence is that, once things started going wrong on the site, and this was observed by the Environment Agency officers and notices were requested to correct things, you paid no attention at all but continued as before and lied to the officers as to what was going on at the site.

"By the time you lost your lease in July 2008, things were looking very black against you indeed. Since then, you have got this cleared up but I'm told you're liable to reimburse a company for that."

The judge also told Pearce-Lynch to pay £300 court costs and gave him a year to pay the total penalty, with 25 days in prison in default.

Thomas Crowther, prosecuting, said Environment Agency officers visited the site from October 2007 and issued Pearce-Lynch with notices telling him to remove stores of waste from his premises.

The court heard Pearce- Lynch's firm also operated a skip hire company, which drops off waste collected at the site in Petherbridge Road.

Mr Crowther said, however, Pearce-Lynch failed to sort and dispose of the waste – metal, paper, cardboard and household waste – correctly and at one point, inspectors estimated there was almost 5,000 tonnes filling the industrial unit when the firm was licensed to store a mere 195 tonnes.

The court heard that such was the volume of the rubbish mountain, the walls of the unit were said to be almost collapsing under the pressure.

Peter Wadsley, defending, told the court it is not a case concerning fly-tipping or storing waste in an unsuitable area, which led to pollution.

Mr Wadsley said that when his client fell into difficulties with his rent, his landlord repossessed the site and he had to borrow £20,000 from relatives to continue at the site and then splashed out further money to employ a firm to get rid of the bulk of the waste.

He said, though, that since then the company had not traded successfully, was again unable to pay rent and the landlord repossessed the premises.

The court heard Pearce- Lynch had taken out a second mortgage on his Bristol home to the tune of £145,000 and had paid that money to various creditors in five months.