DODGY LEAFLETS: Local elections are still more than a year away, but the colourful flyers with carefully crafted weasel words are already beginning to appear on residents’ doormats. Not all are overtly from political parties, but as BELLE MONT reports, every paragraph of them needs to be checked
False information: far from there being a ‘steep rise in food waste recycling’, there’s been a steep fall overall in recycling rates
At least one local councillor has been busy, flagging up the wastefulness of his borough’s rubbish contractor, Veolia.
Nick Mattey, an independent councillor on Sutton Council for Beddington ward, has filed a complaint to his borough’s Monitoring Officer over what he says are deliberately misleading claims being made by the contractor, with the authority’s knowledge and approval, when the claims have no real basis in fact.
“They must think we are all stupid,” Mattey told Inside Sutton.
Mattey’s written complaint about the mass distribution of leaflets around the borough went to Monitoring Officer Tim Martin, the most senior legal official working at the council, under the provocative headline: “Sutton Council’s shameful and deceitful approach to waste and recycling.”
Barry “Basher” Lewis, the council leader, has also received a Mattey broadside.
Mattey’s been steaming more than the Beddington incinerator (notoriously, a LibDem councillor once tried to claim what was coming out of Viridor’s chimneys was not noxious emissions, but just “steam”) over the leaflets, which have the headline: “Steep rise in food waste recycling”.
According to Mattey, the publicity campaign conducted by Veolia, with leaflets delivered to possibly 80,000 households around the borough, “is part of the softening-up campaign to build a massive anaerobic digester in Beddington Lane, so all the members of the South London Waste Partnership can bring all their stinking food into Beddington”.
The South London Waste Partnership is the failed local quango, operating across Croydon, Merton, Kingston and Sutton, which has delivered the twin disasters of Binmageddon and the Viridor incinerator on south London.
And while the SLWP boroughs initially signed a multi-million joint deal for domestic waste collection and street cleaning with Veolia, the contractors proved to be so bad at their jobs that two years ago, three boroughs – Croydon, Sutton and Merton – sacked Veolia.
Only to then go and rehire Veolia under agreements which begin on April 1.
Mattey foresees the area he represents being used as a dumping ground once again, this time for an anaerobic digestor, just as it was a decade ago when the incinerator deal, and dodgy planning application, was pushed through to benefit multinational business Viridor at the expense of the residents of Sutton and those living downwind in Croydon.
Mattey said, “It is clear that this council has no shame, and believes it has no obligation to tell the truth. At the last council meeting, the Liberal Democrats attempted to argue that food recycling in Sutton had significantly increased.
“This, of course, is entirely false.”
LibDem councillors have described the recent Veolia leaflet as “wonderful”. Mattey, however, calls it “a pack of lies”.
In black and white: the official figures for the four SLWP boroughs show a big decline in recycling rates
According to a Freedom of Information response in Merton, food recycling in Sutton has increased by just 0.55% — equivalent to a mere 200 grams per resident in one year.
“These marginal changes can hardly be described as a ‘steep increase’,” Mattey said. “Words such as dismal, pathetic or non-existent would be more accurate.”
Defending residents: Nick Mattey
Overall, recycling rates in Sutton have fallen from 50% to 41.55% in five years. It is five years since the voracious furnaces of the Beddington incinerator came on stream.
In his complaint to Martin, Mattey writes: “Thanks to Sutton’s ‘burn it rather than recycle it’ policy, Viridor’s value has soared from £4.2billion to £7billion in the same period. The link between an incinerator and falling recycling rates is undeniable.
“Viridor preys on councils like Sutton, making massive profits while local politicians mindlessly repeat pro-incineration rhetoric,” Mattey said.
“The Liberal Democrats are prostituting Sutton as a dumping ground — welcoming as much waste as possible into the borough. This is nothing less than a shameless betrayal of the people they claim to represent.”
And Mattey has detected a sub-text. “With an election approaching next year, it is evident that Veolia is eager to assist councils in misleading the public into believing there have been significant improvements in food recycling.
“The distribution of these deceitful leaflets is both degrading and exposes the underhanded tactics being used to manipulate public perception.”
- Have you received a dodgy leaflet recently, from a political party or a local authority contractor helping the powers-that-be and who agree to their contracts? If so, get photos of the leaflet and email them to us here at inside.croydon@btinternet.com, together with your own comments and observations about the glossy papered propaganda
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Croydon is Top of the Slops when looking at the tonnage of food waste collected, according to the figures provided by South London Waste (of space) Partnership.
However, we are bottom of the class when taking into account the amount per person. The measly 23.1kg went up by just 2.31 grammes in the first two years of Perry’s period in office.
Will his new deal with Veolia, starting on April Fool’s Day, make a difference? Not according to the 2023 rubbish survey, analysed by Enventure Research. Their representative sample of the borough’s citizens found that 39% just don’t bother with food waste recycling. Why not? Amazingly the top reason the refuseniks gave – 54% – was because they “don’t have containers”.
“Fear not, Perry’s sidekick, Councillor Scott Roche, will be on the case. As Cabinet Member for Streets and Environment, a post which gives him an extra £28k on top of the £12k he gets for doing sod all for the good people of Shirley North (https://insidecroydon.com/2024/05/17/toss-cars-2024-we-name-croydons-most-work-shy-councillors/)” he’s not only responsible for our recycling, he’s actually the Chair of the SLWP!”
Unlike part-time Perry, Roche hasn’t got a day job to take up his time, so he can devote himself 100% to his civic duties. If he gets on his bike and rides around to all the homes without food waste bins, he might achieve an increase of a whole three grammes to announce just before next year’s council elections.
The problem round here with food waste collection is that the local foxes seem to have learned how to unlock the bins and scatter waste all over the road
Just put a brick on top of the waste caddy, Kevin.
I’m curious about the target:- more waste is… better? If the goal is to live more sustainably, perhaps people wouldn’t be putting so much food in the bin? (Reduce, reuse, recycle – in that order!).
I appreciate measuring the quantity of food in general waste is probably prohibitively difficult, but I’m not sure what “good” looks like here.
Good question. Could it be that Croydonians eat more leftovers than residents of Kingston, Merton and Sutton? More likely they just dump anything and everything into the incinerator bin