If anyone tells you that the Incinerator only produces steam, they are either lying to you, or a fool.

Author: Councillor Sheldon Vestey is the Leader of the Sutton Labour Group, a Government Scientific Grant Assessor and holds dual discipline degrees in Biochemistry.

Smoking is good for you. We know that statement isn’t true but believe it or not, that’s what doctors used to tell us. Just like with the oil industry, profits can regularly overcome health, the environment and politics. In Sutton, we don’t expect to see big tobacco or big oil, but what we do have, is big incineration with Viridor operating a Billion-pound incinerator on our doorstep.

Is it safe? Personally, I think not, as do many others, including all parliamentary groups, numerous scientists, MPs, and formal groups like UKWIN (UK without incineration). That view isn’t tolerated by Sutton Council, however, and specifically the Liberal Democrats, well at least in Sutton anyway. In other boroughs though, they’re against it.

“Incinerators are far more polluting than even coal-fired power plants, for example releasing 2.5 times as much CO2 and three times as much nitrous oxides. Almost 10,000 premature deaths are linked to poor air quality in London each year.” Haringey Liberal Democrats

So what’s different in Sutton? Well, our local Liberal Democrats are adamant that the Beddington Incinerator outputs exclusively steam and not smoke, and they’ve given the incinerator their political seal of approval intrinsically linking their interests to that of a private company.  It doesn’t help of course that their Chair of the Environment Committee holds a BTEC or equivalent in aviation travel. (article continues below video)

A thick grey non-dissapating “steam” coming from burning plastic. Unmute to play sound.

An unnecessary reminder for most, but steam is heated water vapour and smoke is the visible suspension of carbon or other particles, typically emitted from burning substances. Incineration of course is the destruction of something by burning. It doesn’t take a genius to tell you whether this will create steam or smoke.

To be clear then, the statement that incineration produces exclusively steam is both a dangerous and misleading one. Something that would only be repeated by people who have exactly zero scientific training or who derive their financial interests from burning waste. Incineration produces particulates which cause heart and lung issues, heavy metals such as lead and mercury which cause neurological disorders and toxic chemicals such as PFA’s and dioxins which cause cancer.

Let’s consider this pragmatically, Incineration is exactly what it says on the tin, the burning of waste. Specifically, where large amounts of diesel and now furnace flame (a high sulphur content ignition fuel that is cheaper than diesel) are poured into a chamber filled with plastics, organic waste and builders materials that cannot be recycled and burned to leave an ash by-product proving an incomplete combustion. If Viridor had found a way to set fire to plastics and plaster board, producing only water then they would have solved both the climate crisis and our diminishing freshwater supplies. Hooray for no more hosepipe bans!

Digging deeper, we need to consider exactly what plastics are, they’re hydrocarbon polymers. In the case of PVC’s, a type of plastic, that’s long chains of carbon atoms interspersed with chlorine. Quite simply, there is no way to produce exclusively water, when you’re burning carbon and chlorine. The output of which can exclusively contain CO2 and Hydrochloric acid.

All of this isn’t to say that there aren’t measures  to mitigate this output, just like there are in car exhausts, but we all know that when you combust diesel and  plastics, you’re not just getting steam and that’s why the Beddington incinerator has had dozens of breaches for releasing compounds which can harm health. Some of which include hydrochloric acid, sulphur dioxide, dioxins and unknown levels of heavy metals as they simply don’t monitor this routinely.

The frankly bizarre line that the Beddington Incinerator produces only steam can therefore only be one that has been fed to the Sutton Libdems by people with a profit interest in keeping these local government politicians onside, and one the Sutton LibDems have allowed themselves to regurgitate in the face of what should be a plain reality. It must be hard to support something publicly if you accept it can hurt people and the environment, or when you need those very same people to vote for you.

Next time someone tries to tell you that the Beddington Incinerator only outputs steam, ask yourself, is this person linked to the waste incineration sector? Have they built political capital over telling people it’s fine? Are they just a fool? Or perhaps all of the above?

 N.B: This article was written on a day when the thick black acrid smoke from the Beddington Incinerator permeated my home roughly 1 mile from the site and dozens of local residents had complained to the EA who simply said that the Incinerator operator had failed to report yet another environmental breach. It’s definitely not making my cough or my children’s lungs any better. I can’t remember the last time my kettle put out a thick non-dissipating grey steam when I made a cup of tea, can you?