How waste burning affects UK’s poorest neighbourhoods

[@equinox95]

The waste incinerator in New Cross in London only burn the waste at night but insist that it's safe, in the middle of a heavily built up area.

[@SS-qy9ec]

This is like saying. I don’t smoke during the day. At night I smoke as many as I can!

[@LouHillierPsych]

The fact they are burning 'only at night' is an indirect admission that it is not safe, if it was safe, they would burn during the day too!

[@Tom-jf5qv]

From my experience you are wrong that councils have some incentive to use incinerators. For councils the incentive is always to recycle, they either make money from selling it on or the disposal charges for recycling are far cheaper than incineration. Recycling has far more value than waste. But when there is waste, it has to be taken somewhere. In addition there is a valid argument for incineration to be considered, that at the moment we send waste abroad, and will need to send more as waste increases as projected, and that produces far more carbon than incinerating at home. Its also often shipped to poorer countries, and not often in far worse inceinerators with worse filters. A fair analysis should consider this point. The focus should not be on councils but heavily on the government. The government can pass legislation to reduce the amount of waste produced in this country. If it does then maybe we won't need new incinerators. If it doesn't then we do. The governement is not moving fast enough and has in fact rejected proposals, that will reduce waste, like the fast fashion tax. Campaign against them.

[@shumanrotula7697]

Let's optimize our consumption, let's recycle more and there will be less incinerators. The waste has to go somewhere unfortunately....

[@jennylee5003]

All these ppl with their “green” ideas have no idea what waste management looks like on a larger scale. It’s easy to say “make super expensive environmentally friendly incinerators” but don’t understand how much waste there is, that it takes time to burn and cool, and you’d need millions of machines. Those machines are a burden on the power grid. Power is more expensive bc of politicians this year… For one family to have all their waste incinerated by a fancy retort for a month would cost a few hundred dollars.

[@LouHillierPsych]

It doesn't matter what race or skin colour people are, the polutants don't discriminate.

[@personalexperience3637]

What is the correlation with cancer levels in Edmonton?

[@melaniemoon4463]

Ours is Coventry

[@p.gr.]

The recycling in London, and even in the rest of UK, is horrible. Go to Italy, France or Germany, you’ll see the difference. There they recycle, here they pretend to recycle and throw the rubbish in incinerator. In other countries you see a real interest in recycling: paper, glass, metals, food scraps and general waste have their own bin. They have for each one of them a bin on every street, and if street is to long, they have several of them, so collecting them is really easy and practical- you can’t have all of them for each house. So, if this can be done in these countries, the question is why is this not happening here too? The disinterested political class must be forced to take action, otherwise nothing will ever change.

[@nilstriplett]

After washing transporting and melting/reforming recycling it becomes a close to equal environmental impact as incinerations environmental impact without the benefit of producing electricity. Incineration plants recycle all of the metals left over to produce new construction materials (this includes aluminum cans). Incineration isn’t perfect but some could argue that it’s even better than recycling. Politics definitely have to do with our recycling systems but economics will always win. Incineration makes money and recycling doesn’t it’s just the fact.

[@UMAIRRAJA90]

Yes they have hundreds of plastic bins for each thing which they collect and send them to third world countries to keep it. Very environmentally friendly. Like Norway being one of the biggest oil producers buy more electric cars to be shown as holier then tho.

[@Ratman_Bejo]

From my experience you are wrong that councils have some incentive to use incinerators

[@melaniemoon4463]

Ive lived near a waste chimney for all my life and i have all the illnesses to prove it 😢x

[@ruzenasvedelius8731]

Waste incineration is unsustainable! How much organic material - which can be treated with biological methods - is found in domestic and commercial waste? In all countries, most household waste originates from plants, animals and micro-organisms (around 70%) and should be called "renewable organic material". All thermal methods for handling inorganic material are unsustainable because they kill all microorganisms and create emissions that negatively affect the environment, health, climate and economy. Tell residents that waste incineration is very good for business economics, but citizens pay several times over: 1) for collection and transport 2) for administration 3) for combustion 4) for doctor visits due to emissions into the environment 5) for food grown using agrochemicals because waste incineration prevents the reuse of the chemical elements essential for crop production. These are hydrogen (H), carbon (C), oxygen (O), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potash (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), sulfur (S), chloride (Cl ), iron (Fe), boron (B), manganese (Mn), zinc (Zn), cuprum (Cu), and molybdenum (Mo). Stimulating elements are cobalt (Co), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), vanadium (V), strontium (Sn), lithium (Li), fluorine (F), selenium (Se), silicon (Si), etc. Carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen the plants get from carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). Other elements are called plant nutrients that must be present in the soil. Why do today's decision-makers and policy-makers lack basic knowledge about the conditions for life and human biological foundations? Waste incineration started in Sweden in Malmö when1997 SYSAV AB received permission from the environmental court to build two waste incinerators. NOTE!

[@summerisonthursday5239]

Stop producing so much packaging.

[@e.l.norton]

Everything needs a package. Your $1000 smartphone full of plastic and toxic metals needs packaging to protect it. Stop buying so much shit, move into a cave and be done with it.

[@Daniel-gs9eh]

stop buying it then

[@OzzieBo]

The smokestacks look like cigarettes! LMAO!

[@lerchiosi]

Nothing to do with people of colour ffs.

[@hebirb]

Humans cut trees to write save the earth

[@Reotha]

smart of us lol

[@neo-lt8nt]

Throw the govenment in them.

[@rossgoodchild1852]

Having worked in the waste industry for nearly 23 years what this programme hasn't explained in my experience and knowledge is that these poorer areas are also not very good at recycling or sorting there waste appropriately so the argument is a little in balanced. There is a place for incineration but a wide and bigger future for recycling. Refuse is a renewable energy as we all produce it one way or another if people dont/can't recycle we have to do something with it so why not use it as fuel??

[@firstnamesurname1743]

Greenpeace: Never satisfied with any solution, everything is another problem.

[@jellybeans0493]

OMG, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE POOR COMMUNITY WHERE THERE ARE COLORED PEOPLE IN IT???? Do you not care about the poor colored folk???? The fat brown bearded bloke is a communist Something what he said: "it's an issue of race and class" 5:25 Communism 101 Instead of realising that paying a hundred bucks per m² is a better deal then paying more then 15K per m² (London prices) he blames it on race and class. Btw: most people we saw had quite a nice backround. It seems as if she didn't even talk to the poor folk around the factory and also the workers. So we might as well ignore it all.

[@Daniel-gs9eh]

all I'm hearing is dont build factories in poor communities

[@joesmith8701]

these poor comunitys need hevy industry so they can get a job in the factorys and get a wage that lifts them out of poverty

[@mitchmiller7919]

Instead of incinerator use gasification instead zeero pollution an 150 yr old technology it is a wonder why they don't use it his instead of incinerator.