Forum topic: Consultation - Have your say on how to reduce north London’s waste.

As the world around us variously burns or floods, and climate change ever more shouts the need for remedial action, our waste authority (NLWA) indicate they are about to start a new strategy – the North London Joint Waste Strategy (NLJWS). It will be developed with the seven north London councils. The previous one, started in roughly 2005, signed off (in a rush) in 2008, expired in 2020. Its direction was towards a waste management site on Pinkham Way, with forecasts of huge, ever-increasing levels of waste; whereas now we are expected to end up with an incinerator at Edmonton and waste levels which have been at most flat despite huge increases in London’s population over the period. The new strategy will extend out to 2040 – which I note is a shorter term than borrowing to fund the incinerator - and well short of its expected life.
The consultation link starts with the statement: “North London generates 600,000 tonnes of rubbish a year.”
So why is North London building a 700,000 tonne pa capacity incinerator?
Take that thinking a stage further and factor in that London’s recycling target is now at least 60%, which means the NLWA / 7 councils will be expected to recycle AT LEAST 360,000 tpa, thereby leaving a maximum of 240,000 tonnes of residual waste for disposal. Might the planned incinerator be ballpark three times too large based on their own figures?
So how did we end up with something so large? I can safely say the original forecast was total nonsense, said so at the time and many times since. The NLWA’s supporting commentary that, “The model was developed based on …. a robust analysis of historical trends and a robust set of assumptions about what will happen to these trends in the future”, has redefined the meaning of robust.
Of all the dodgy numbers my favourite was the assumption that gross disposable household income (GDHI – think of it as your spending power) would increase by 3% compounded each year far into the distant future. Sitting in the wreckage of the 2007/8 financial crisis that seemed a tad optimistic and now when looking across ever increasing food bank queues we contemplate flat real wages since 2005 it may seem, and here I quote the authors, “speculative”.
Stage one is a listening exercise with identified parties who have engaged with waste in the past. The exercise, it is claimed, will be iterative, first listening “to understand local priorities and aspirations to inform the strategy” before a formal consultation seeks feedback on a draft strategy in 2024.
Call me Nostradamus but I suspect local priorities and aspirations will not be to fund a hugely oversized incinerator pumping out extraordinary volumes of climate change driving gas for the next four decades or so but nonetheless that is where the strategy will end up. Of course, I may be wrong; we can find out in 2024 when the draft strategy will be available.
The PG newsletter provides a link to contribute your own thoughts: www.nlwa.gov.uk/news/have-your-say-how-reduce-north-londons-waste . Mind you, reduce the waste even more and the incinerator will be even more oversized. Another strategic conundrum.

Re my recent post, I should clarify that the 2030 recycling target is 65% for London (of which NLWA represents roughly one quarter). The 65% is a mix of our municipal waste plus about two thirds of Commercial and industrial (C&I) waste. The latter has a better recycling rate (forecast 85% by 2030) meaning our household element can be a bit shy of 65% and the London wide target still be achieved. My “60%” comment is therefore ballpark OK if not exactly in line with the waste plan signed off by the boroughs last year. The bigger question remains valid: why are we piling £1bn plus into a new CO2 generating machine which is simply far too large for north London, and with capacity available elsewhere in London for our residue after effective recycling, not required at all. Are we really so financially flush?