Singing protesters shut down Edmonton Incinerator meeting

The North London Waste Authority (NLWA) has been subject to a long-running campaign over its £1.2billion plan to rebuild and expand the Edmonton Incinerator near Chingford.

The current incinerator is the oldest of its kind in the UK and in increasingly poor condition, with a five-month “outage” of one of its turbines last year causing a £5.5 million loss in productivity.

Meeting for the first time since May’s local elections, the waste authority’s 14 members planned to re-elect a chair and vice chair, discuss the past year and scrutinise waste reduction plans on Thursday.

Read more: 'People are burning public money, literally' - MP slams incinerator bosses

However, around 20 protestors refused to stop singing and chanting lyrics such as “burning waste is killing me”, eventually forcing the meeting to be held in private.

The campaigners began the noisy protest when it became clear that the authority’s 14 members, who represent the seven boroughs of North London, intended to re-elect Waltham Forest’s deputy leader Clyde Loakes as chair for the 14th year.

Dorothea Hackman, of Extinction Rebellion Camden, urged NLWA members not to pick him again, arguing ten years as chair should be the “natural limit” to avoid the authority becoming “wedded” to past decisions and unable to listen to “legitimate and evidenced objections”.

She added: “The Edmonton incinerator might have seemed like a good idea in 2015, 2016 and possibly even 2017, but now in 2022 it is not a good idea and we need you to hear this.

A CGI of the planned Edmonton incinerator

“There are issues of misrepresentation about emissions and comparisons that say that burning plastic in incinerators is somehow better than landfill – which it isn’t.

“We are in a position with the climate emergency where we want to stop the manufacture of plastics altogether – you should not be building an incinerator but a proper waste recycling facility.”

During a short debate Haringey councillor Isidoros Diakides appeared open to a review of the rules around NLWA’s leadership but spoke positively of Cllr Loakes’s “many years of dedicated service”.

The protest group then began singing lyrics such as “stop pause and review, do not elect Clyde Loakes, take it over” until the meeting was adjourned.

Minutes later members attempted to re-enter the meeting room but were unable to stop the protestors, led by a singer called Marcus, from following them back in.

The meeting eventually resumed in a private room of the Camden Council office building, where Cllr Loakes was elected chair and Islington’s Rowena Champion and Hackney’s Mete Coban were elected as deputy chairs.

Following the meeting an NLWA spokesperson said: “NLWA has always welcomed and encouraged residents to make deputations at our meetings, however shutting down a meeting and preventing democratic processes calls into question the real motives of protestors.”

The seven boroughs represented by the NLWA – Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey, Islington and Waltham Forest – have a combined household recycling rate of 28.7%, rising only 0.2% since last year.

Haringey’s Mike Hakata asked whether the authority was “missing a trick” by not investing in technology that could sort more recyling from regular household waste.

Cllr Loakes accepted North London is “falling behind” with recycling rates but said the responsibility to encourage residents “starts in our respective boroughs”.

He added that Government plans for a deposit return scheme, which would see people pay a small deposit for drinks that they receive back when they recycle the bottle or can, had been “delayed, delayed, delayed”.