Viridor’s polluting incinerator at Beddington Lane broke the strict terms of its operating licence five times during December, according to data released by the operator.
Smoke stacks: the Beddington incinerator, polluting our air since 2018
Viridor failed to issue its usual two-weekly update during December – at a time when the Environment Agency was considering the profit-hungry multi-billion multi-national’s latest application to increase the amount of rubbish it can burn at the plant situated close to the Sutton-Croydon borough boundary.
The consultation into the licence extension conducted by the toothless environmental watchdog closed on December 23.
Viridor’s emissions data – the company is allowed to mark its own homework – shows that levels of sulphur dioxide (SO2), a major cause of asthma, were exceeded four times during the month: twice on December 15, then again on December 16 and for a fourth occasion on December 22. Nice, just in time for Santa…
“Viridor will be hoping to write off the first two incidences as ‘Abnormal Operations’,” according to environment activist, Mark Gale, “but breaching the permit again the following day on December 16 won’t help their chances.”
The different types of fumes from VOCs will cause different effects on the body and airways. Viridor just blames “oil contamination” for the breach.
Viridor is supposed to be a contractor to four south London councils – Croydon, Sutton, Merton and Kingston. Between them, they are paying Viridor £1billion under a 25-year contract to burn their boroughs’ unrecycled waste.
As Inside Croydon first revealed in 2011, the original contract even required Viridor to be able to dispose of nuclear and radioactive waste at its Beddington plant.
The contract actively works against improved, more sustainable means of dealing with the boroughs’ waste – Viridor makes more dosh by burning more, while recycling material is often more costly to the contractors. The recycling rates in Croydon and Sutton, after a decade of hard work and some progress, have fallen sharply since the incinerator came on stream.
And Viridor is given an easy time by their clients – Croydon and the three other boroughs. They have all effectively “outsourced” the responsibility for managing waste issues to an arm’s length organisation, the unaccountable South London Waste Partnership.
The SLWP committee comprises two councillors from each of the councils. There are no opposition councillors allowed to ask any awkward questions, and matters hardly ever get debated in full council.
Coming your way from Beddington sometime soon: the Viridor incinerator often releases Volatile Organic Compounds into the south London air
Not only that, but the SLWP committee barely ever meets.
It is currently Croydon’s turn to lead on the SLWP, with Conservative councillor Scott Roche, the appointee of the borough’s pro-pollution Mayor Jason Jason Perry, as chair. Roche’s day job is working for the Sutton and Cheam MP, Paul Scully.
Another member of the committee is Merton councillor Natasha Irons, one of the short-listed candidates for selection as Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Croydon East.
It was Croydon Tories in 2010 who deliberately deceived the electorate about there being no incinerator being built in the borough – when they knew only too well that the plans were to build the pollution plant just down the tram tracks at Beddington, with thousands of Croydon homes, schools and its biggest hospital just downwind of the toxic fumes.
‘Doesn’t know, doesn’t care’: Scott Roche
As Inside Croydon reported last year, infant mortality rates in one part of Croydon increased by more than four times in the first year after Viridor began plying their polluting trade in south London.
On a previous occasion when Viridor broke the supposedly strict terms of its licence, in 2022, the incinerator went more than seven times over internationally recommended emissions levels for hydrogen chloride. Hydrogen chloride is the chemical normally used in the production of potentially deadly hydrochloric acid.
Our councils, and our elected representatives, meanwhile, continue to give Viridor an easy ride.
On one occasion, a Sutton LibDem cabinet member and apologist for Viridor, Manuel Abellan, actually tried to claim that the smoke billowing from the pair of Beddington chimneys was “just steam”.
The SLWP committee cancelled its meeting for November 29 – just when the Environment Agency was conducting its consultation on increasing the incinerator’s capacity. In fact, according to official records, up to December 2023, the SLWP committee had met just three times since June 2022. The Croydon Council website has no future SLWP committee meetings scheduled.
Gale said: “If you recognise any of the members of the committee, whether they are your councillor, a cabinet member or prospective parliamentary candidate, do let them know the news about the December pollution breaches, because they won’t know. They really don’t care.
“Ask them what they are going to do about the regular breaches.”
- There’s a running total of the breaches by Viridor’s Beddington incinerator at http://www.merton.tv/incinerator-breaches/
Read more: Viridor’s charge sheet: incinerator operator’s eco-vandalism
Read more: Viridor incinerator fined for multiple pollution permit breaches
Read more: ‘People will die’: Dombey accused of Viridor ‘Faustian pact’
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