When Viridor, operators of the toxic polluting Beddington incinerator, issued their triumphalist press release yesterday announcing that they had been granted an extension on their licence to burn rubbish, it was sent from a public relations firm which is owned by APCO Worldwide, the company at the centre of a political scandal that threatens to bring down Keir Starmer’s government.
As reported yesterday, useless watchdog the Environment Agency has agreed to allow Viridor to increase the volume of waste burned at their Beddington Lane facility by 10%, to 382,286 tonnes per annum, much of which will be trucked in from outside the area by a fleet of HGVs.
The first notice of the EA decision that was sent yesterday to councillors and local groups came from the swanky Strand office of Viridor’s long-term spin doctor, Andrew Turner, who signed himself as “senior director, Camarco, an APCO company”.
APCO Worldwide is the public relations firm which accepted a £36,000 fee to conduct “dark shit” against several journalists who were investigating the affairs of Labour Together, the organisation co-founded by Croydon MP Steve Reed and managed for a time by his Lambeth Council mate, Morgan McSweeney.
Senior director: Andrew Turner has been spinning for incinerator operators Viridor for several years
APCO were commissioned by another Labour Together director, Josh Simons, to spy on and discredit journalists who were seen as a threat to the “think tank”. When details of the APCO commission was published, Simons resigned from his job as a minister in Starmer’s government. He has since resigned as an MP, triggering “probably the most consequential by-election in decades”, in Makerfield later this month.
APCO are subject to an on-going review of their part in this still-simmering scandal.
The Public Relations and Communications Association is investigating APCO, the review based on a 58-page dossier compiled by a senior director at the company that targeted journalists from The Sunday Times and The Guardian who were reporting on Labour Together’s undeclared donations.
The dossier baselessly linked the reporters to foreign hacking networks.
So it’s heart-warming to see that one of APCO’s subsidiaries, Camarco, is being used by Viridor to burnish their sullied reputation in Beddington, where their incinerator broke the terms of its licence 916 times in a 15-month period.
While Viridor has been reneging on its promise to restore the Beddington Farmlands and spewing toxic filth from its incinerator, Capital Market Communications Ltd, or Camarco, has been banking tens of thousands of pounds a year for putting a positive spin on the ongoing environmental disaster in south London.
Camarco has a well-deserved reputation for not being too forthcoming when asked difficult questions about Viridor’s operations in Beddington.
Camarco was behind the release of a Viridor newsletter promoting the benefits of the incinerator… just ahead of last month’s local elections.
Going for the burn: the Viridor incinerator at Beddington could be burning waste for another 20 years
Information about all things incineration in and around Sutton for the past decade has tended to be controlled by Viridor’s spin doctors – with even the council’s own press office having to wait for the multi-billion company’s clearance on any joint statements on the frequent occasions the plant has had a fire or other incident that has focused media attention.
Camarco has also handled public relations for Valencia Waste Management, which is the current supplier of landfill gas to Sutton Council’s failing SDEN company. Valencia is in dispute with the council over the failed restoration of the Farmlands, an obligation that fell to Valencia when it bought the landfill site from Viridor.
There’s no evidence of wrongdoing by Camarco of the kind which has brought notoriety to parent company APCO, when they targeted The Guardian’s Henry Dyer and Declassified’s John McAvoy, as well as investigative journalist Paul Holden, the author of the powerful political exposé, The Fraud.
Inside Croydon was itself hacked in 2021 as part of a wider conspiracy to undermine independent journalism and to reveal confidential sources. The hacked material was passed to the highest echelons of the Labour Party, including local MP Reed and David Evans, then the party’s all-powerful General Secretary, who was appointed by Starmer.
APCO Worldwide owns Camarco, and the companies share directors Brad Staples, the CEO of APCO, and Margery Kraus.
The dubious work carried out by APCO for Labour Together was described by former Labour MP John Cruddas as “dark shit”. Camarco’s parent company’s dodgy conduct offers strong cause to take any briefings offered by Viridor’s spin doctors with the greatest degree of caution, and scepticism.
Read more: ‘Sickening’: EA allows even more waste to burn in Beddington
Read more: Infant death rates were up by 233% after incinerator fired up
Read more: Viridor’s charge sheet: incinerator operator’s eco-vandalism
Read more: Viridor incinerator fined for multiple pollution permit breaches
Peter Geoghegan, one of the journalists who exposed the APCO dirty tricks campaign against journalists conducted on behalf of Labour Together, and whose reports led to the resignation of junior minister Josh Simons, is interviewed about the story in this month’s edition of The Andrew Fisher Interview. Click here to listen to the podcast now
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