Dear Supporter
We’ve sent you plenty of information recently about Community R4C’s actions to try and stop incineration in Gloucestershire (most recently our Illegal State Aid complaint to the EU) but whilst we’ve been busy locally there’s been lots happening nationally and we thought you might like to hear about it.
But first, we thought you might appreciate the irony of this: Last week, Councillor Nigel Moor, Cabinet Member for the Environment, commented in a press release that: “Javelin Park disposes of the waste Gloucestershire can’t recycle cleanly and safely.” That same week we received this “Message from Gloucestershire County Council”
We’ll leave it to you to decide where the truth lies!
NATIONAL INCINERATOR NEWS
HOT OFF THE PRESS! INCINERATORS MUST BE INCLUDED IN THE EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME
On Tuesday 1st December, a High Court Judge granted Georgia Elliot-Smith (an environmental engineer from Enfield, London and anti-incinerator campaigner), leave for a Judicial Review on an area of Government policy that could have a huge impact in stopping incineration.
With Brexit, the Government has developed proposals for a UK-wide Emissions Trading Scheme to replace the EU scheme, providing a mechanism to reduce industry emissions of greenhouse gases. But incinerators have been left out of the scheme, even though in 2019, the UK had 48 incinerators that poured 6.6 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere – and didn’t pay a single penny for it. That’s the same as all the emissions from Birmingham and Manchester put together. Worse, a further 17 incinerators are under construction and dozens more are seeking planning permission. So Georgia and her lawyers, Leigh Day, are arguing that omitting major polluters like incinerators from the UK ETS is directly against the Paris Climate Change Agreement. And they’ve won the right to have their case heard in court, probably in March. In the meantime you can read more about it and support her campaign here: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/make-incineration-polluters-pay/
SIGN THE OPEN LETTER TO BORIS JOHNSON CALLING FOR INVESTMENT TO GO TO THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY, NOT INCINERATION
A group of Extinction Rebellion campaigners in London have produced this excellent open letter to Boris Johnson calling for a transition to a circular economy without more waste incineration. It includes two fully-referenced amazing annexes with facts about incineration and the move to a Zero Waste Circular Economy. You can sign the letter, which already has signatories including UKWIN, Biofuelwatch, Greenpeace, Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth, The Climate Coalition, Zero Waste Europe, George Monbiot, and a growing number of MPs and Councillors.
Visit https://www.xrzerowaste.uk/ to read more about it.
SIGN UP TO THE 8TH DECEMBER 2020 ZOOM MEETING ON UKWIN POLICY PROPOSALS AND INVITE YOUR MP
UKWIN (UK Without Incineration Network) has set out three policy proposals for England that would help move us away from incineration and towards a circular economy:
Introduce an immediate moratorium on new waste incineration capacity;
Phase in an escalating incineration tax to complement the landfill tax; and
Adopt meaningful municipal waste reduction targets for total and residual waste.
The event will be taking place on Tuesday 8th December from 4pm.
It will be hosted by UKWIN and chaired by Rt Hon Dr Andrew Murrison, the Conservative MP for South West Wiltshire, with presentations from Shlomo Dowen of UKWIN and John Grogan, who as a Labour MP was the primary sponsor of the cross-party Early Day Motion #581 which called for a moratorium of new waste incineration capacity.
Go to https://ukwin.org.uk/policy/ to read the report and book your place, and ask your MP to join the 8th December Zoom meeting.
NEW REPORT: THE CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS OF BURNING MUNICIPAL WASTE IN SCOTLAND
This report provides evidence that Energy from Waste Incineration creates unacceptably high carbon emissions. “If the proportion of plastic waste in residual municipal waste is increased from 15% to 17%, EfW emissions rise to the same level as landfill. As the composition of residual municipal waste changes over time, there is a risk that the greenhouse gas emissions per tonne of waste sent to EfWs will increase above those landfilled, leading to unnecessary climate change impacts.” It also shows that MBT processes like our Mechanical Biological Heat Treatment plant that we want to build has the lowest emissions.
ARTICLE ABOUT INCINERATION IN THE UK AND EUROPE
This very interesting article includes this quote: “There are close to 500 incinerators in Europe. Last year, these incinerators created 52Mt of fossil CO2 – that’s more than the annual greenhouse gas emissions of Portugal.”
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