The NLWA’s existing 500,000 tonnes per year capacity plant is to be knocked down and replaced with a larger, 700,000 tonnes per year facility, scheduled to be operational in 2025.
Extinction Rebellion protesters descended on the site just before 6am yesterday (13 December) to demonstrate against the planned redevelopment and what they described as the “environmental racism” of burning recyclables.
In a statement on social media, the official Extinction Rebellion London group said: “We don’t want any more of our recycling burning and polluting the air of our children and communities with toxic, polluting, greenhouse gases.”
Met Police told letsrecycle.com that officers were called to reports of a demonstration at a waste treatment facility shortly after 6am as protesters blocked all four entrance points at the site.
A spokesperson for the police said: “Specialist officers removed obstructions from the various entrances to the site throughout the day.
“By 16.45hrs all obstructions to the site had been removed.”
Eight people were arrested at the site, five on suspicion of aggravated trespass and three on suspicion of obstructing the highway.
The Met said all were taken to a North London police station, where they remain.
‘Worst possible outcome’
In a lengthy statement, Cllr Clyde Loakes, chair of the NLWA, accused the protesters of highlighting “the very problem that NLWA is tasked with tackling: how to deal with the results of never-ending, unsustainable consumption”.
Cllr Loakes said hundreds of tonnes of waste had already been collected from north Londoners’ homes by 10am.
Staff had to shift focus from dealing with contaminated residual waste in “the most hygienic and environmentally responsible way possible”, Cllr Loakes said, to diverting it to alternative locations, “greatly increasing” lorry movements on borough roads.
Cllr Loakes added: “Sadly, what the protesters might not realise is that much of this waste will need to be sent to landfill where it will rot.
“This is the worst possible outcome because waste in landfill releases methane.”
Cllr Loakes concluded his statement by saying the existing EfW plant was more than 50 years old and that the new facility would be “among the most advanced in the world”.
Edmonton
The NLWA manages waste transportation and disposal on behalf of seven boroughs – Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey, Islington, and Waltham Forest – in the North London area, serving more than two million people.
The NLWA is to vote to award the contract for the build of the new EfW plant to Madrid-based construction company Acciona on 16 December (see letsrecycle.com story).
Last month, Cllr Peray Ahmet, the leader of Haringey council, broke rank with the rest of the local authorities involved with the project to write to the NLWA to ask them to “pause and review” the redevelopment of the plant (see letsrecycle.com story).
Subscribe for free