The Earth Cannot Wait

The Earth Cannot Wait : Part 3 from STRIKE! mag on Vimeo.

The Green Party's Derek Wall (@anothergreen) on direct action, seven generation thinking and Marxist ecology:

"Even an entire society and nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. The are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries and have to bequeath it in improved states to succeeding generations"

strikemag.org

thepeoplesparliament.me.uk/

Waste Recycling in Haringey

I reported here on Haringey council’s changes to refuse and recycling in the borough earlier this year. Basically, a new regime of waste collection is being rolled out across Haringey, whereby ‘residual’ waste (that put into black bags) is being reduced from weekly to fortnightly collection, but ‘dry’recyclables (paper, tins, plastics and glass), food and garden waste remain as before on weekly collection. Where garden space allows, 240 litre wheelie bins are being provided to aid the change in emphasis to recycling.

Veolia Environmental Services, the private contractor who won the bid to supply these services, has promised an increase in recycling rates from the current 25% to 40% by 2015, with an ‘aspiration’ to try to increase this further to 50%. The council says that early indications are that recycling rates have risen since the changes started to take place in March this year, although I’ve not been able to find the exact figures.

The local Lib Dems, desperate to tap into some sort of popularist issue to reverse their own unpopularity with residents, as demonstrated by their disastrous showing in the recent London Assembly elections, are waging a campaign against the new collection scheme. Just before the said elections, I received a copy of a Lib Dem leaflet through my door that had the headline, ‘ANGER at fortnightly refuse collection’. It went onto say that bins were overflowing (with one or two photos) which was increasing the amount of vermin in the borough.

I have to say, around my way, I have seen a few over stuffed bins, but by and large, the new system seems to have passed off remarkably smoothly. I have certainly not seen any ‘anger’ from residents, and can only assume that the Lib Dems are trying to whip something up, in the hope of profiting from it in the next council elections in 2014.

Haringey Green party is broadly in favour of the move to more recycling, as it reduces collection carbon emissions and reduces waste being sent to landfill, which is not only good for the environment, but saves the council (and council tax payers) money on landfill taxes levied by central government. I did raise fears that vermin might be problem after the introduction of the new system, and education of residents was the key to reducing this risk. I still think this very important, and is the only area that the Labour council has been remiss in, in this whole operation.

I recently did some work for the neighbouring London borough of Hackney, talking to residents there about (particularly) food recycling. I found most people interested in recycling and very willing to talk about the service. What I found was that many people didn’t understand how the system works for various reasons. One thing I came across was that many of the people who were worried about increased vermin, didn’t know that the food waste bins were lockable. They complained that foxes knocked them over, with food spilling out onto the street, and had given up on recycling food. A simple demonstration from me of how to lock the bins, brought surprise from these people and a promise to try the service again.

I really think Haringey should try this approach, it should pay for itself and more in landfill tax savings. Hackney has reported an early increase in over 30% of food waste recycling, so this kind of engagement with residents clearly works.

Fortnightly Refuse Collections to Begin in Haringey

Beginning in March this year (although this may be delayed until the summer), fortnightly refuse collections are to be introduced in Haringey. In the first wave of this initiative, the wards of Muswell Hill, Highgate, Fortis Green, and parts of Bounds Green, Crouch End and Stroud Green, will move to the new arrangements. In June, the arrangement will be extended to Wood Green, West Green, Bruce Grove, Haringay and St Ann’s wards. In October, the rest of the borough will be brought in line with the new regime.

We were informed of this change in ‘Haringey People’, the council’s glossy, paid for by residents, Labour party propaganda magazine, in December.

Items that are currently recycled will continue to be collected once a week, but ‘residual waste’ (what we put in black bin bags) will only be collected on a fortnightly basis. Existing bins will be used in the first instance, but the ‘green box’ recycling bins will be replaced later, with small green wheelie bins, for glass, paper, tins and plastic waste. Existing garden waste bags and food waste containers will continue to be used for these types of refuse. The scheme will only apply to households who have front gardens or yards large enough to store the extra bins. To encourage food recycling, compostable bags for food waste will be provided free for six months only, and bones can now be put in food waste.

Of course, we in the Green party welcome a move to more recycling, although the current ‘co-mingled’ form of recycling practiced in Haringey (and set to continue) is far from ideal. By mixing different waste, some of it becomes degraded, paper for example, and becomes unsuitable for pulping, and so unrecyclable. Also, glass bottles are not reused or even made into new ones, but used to build roads in places like Malaysia, hardly a very ‘green’ way of dealing waste. All the same, even this limited type of recycling is preferable to landfill, and the new refuse collections are likely to see more waste recycled than at present.

Our old friends the Lib Dems are up to their old tricks again, calling for consultation with residents before the scheme begins, and of course consultation is important, as well as the education of residents, to ensure that implementation and continued usage is successful. But we all know by now what the Lib Dems modus operandi is, sit on the fence, and see which way the wind blows in public opinion, then claim they are speaking for the ‘people’. Shameless opportunism is the Lib Dems stock in trade.

I do though foresee possible problems with moving to a fortnightly collection system. Will residents cooperate in the way necessary to make it work properly? Or will people just dump rubbish in the street and other public areas, or over stuff their ‘grey’ bins so the lid won’t close? We already have a big problem with vermin in Haringey (and much of London) and this policy could well make matters worse. The food recycling bags should be provided free for as long the scheme runs, as I’ve had problems in the past with food waste not being collected because it was in the wrong bag, and they left the lid of the bin open, but no explanation as why it was not collected.

Residents should also be encouraged to reuse items where possible and to compost some waste, but all of this would lead to less refuse, and so less money for private contractor Veolia who will run the new scheme. And there we have the real reason that we are to move to fortnightly waste collection, it’s all about money. Money for Veolia and saving money for the council, in these cash strapped municipal days, not any great concern for the environment, local or further afield.

Veolia can be contacted about the new arrangements on 020 8885 7700 or at enquiries.haringey@veolia.co.uk.

Is the environmental crisis caused by the 7 billion or the 1%?

This article was first published here

The United Nations says that the world's population will reach 7 billion people this month.

The approach of that milestone has produced a wave of articles and opinion pieces blaming the world's environmental crises on overpopulation. In New York's Times Square, a huge and expensive video declares that "human overpopulation is driving species extinct." In London's busiest Underground stations, electronic poster boards warn that 7 billion is ecologically unsustainable.

In 1968, Paul Ehrlich's bestseller The Population Bomb declared that as a result of overpopulation, "the battle to feed humanity is over," and the 1970s would be a time of global famines and ever-rising death rates. His predictions were all wrong, but four decades later his successors still use Ehrlich's phrase -- too many people! -- to explain environmental problems.

But most of the 7 billion are not endangering the earth. The majority of the world's people don't destroy forests, don't wipe out endangered species, don't pollute rivers and oceans, and emit essentially no greenhouse gases.

Even in the rich countries of the Global North, most environmental destruction is caused not by individuals or households, but by mines, factories, and power plants run by corporations that care more about profit than about humanity's survival.

No reduction in U.S. population would have stopped BP from poisoning the Gulf of Mexico last year.

Lower birth rates won't shut down Canada's tar sands, which Bill McKibben has justly called one of the most staggering crimes the world has ever seen.

Universal access to birth control should be a fundamental human right -- but it would not have prevented Shell's massive destruction of ecosystems in the Niger River delta, or the immeasurable damage that Chevron has caused to rainforests in Ecuador.

Ironically, while populationist groups focus attention on the 7 billion, protestors in the worldwide Occupy movement have identified the real source of environmental destruction: not the 7 billion, but the 1%, the handful of millionaires and billionaires who own more, consume more, control more, and destroy more than all the rest of us put together.

In the United States, the richest 1% own a majority of all stocks and corporate equity, giving them absolute control of the corporations that are directly responsible for most environmental destruction.

A recent report prepared by the British consulting firm Trucost for the United Nations found that just 3,000 corporations cause $2.15 trillion in environmental damage every year. Outrageous as that figure is -- only six countries have a GDP greater than $2.15 trillion -- it substantially understates the damage, because it excludes costs that would result from "potential high impact events such as fishery or ecosystem collapse," and "external costs caused by product use and disposal, as well as companies' use of other natural resources and release of further pollutants through their operations and suppliers."

So in the case of oil companies, the figure covers "normal operations," but not deaths and destruction caused by global warming, not damage caused by worldwide use of its products, and not the multi-billions of dollars in costs to clean up oil spills. The real damage those companies alone do is much greater than $2.15 trillion, every single year.

The 1% also control the governments that supposedly regulate those destructive corporations. The millionaires include 46 per cent of members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 54 out of 100 senators, and every president since Eisenhower.

Through the government, the 1% control the U.S. military, the largest user of petroleum in the world, and thus one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases.

Military operations produce more hazardous waste than the five largest chemical companies combined. More than 10 per cent of all Superfund hazardous waste sites in the United States are on military bases.

Those who believe that slowing population growth will stop or slow environmental destruction are ignoring these real and immediate threats to life on our planet. Corporations and armies aren't polluting the world and destroying ecosystems because there are too many people, but because it is profitable to do so.

If the birth rate in Iraq or Afghanistan falls to zero, the U.S. military will not use one less gallon of oil.

If every African country adopts a one-child policy, energy companies in the U.S., China, and elsewhere will continue burning coal, bringing us ever closer to climate catastrophe.

Critics of the too many people argument are often accused of believing that there are no limits to growth. In our case, that simply isn't true. What we do say is that in an ecologically rational and socially just world, where large families aren't an economic necessity for hundreds of millions of people, population will stabilize. In Betsy Hartmann's words, "The best population policy is to concentrate on improving human welfare in all its many facets. Take care of the population and population growth will go down."

The world's multiple environmental crises demand rapid and decisive action, but we can't act effectively unless we understand why they are happening. If we misdiagnose the illness, at best we will waste precious time on ineffective cures; at worst, we will make the crises worse.

The too many people argument directs the attention and efforts of sincere activists to programs that will not have any substantial effect. At the same time, it weakens efforts to build an effective global movement against ecological destruction: It divides our forces, by blaming the principal victims of the crisis for problems they did not cause.

Above all, it ignores the massively destructive role of an irrational economic and social system that has gross waste and devastation built into its DNA. The capitalist system and the power of the 1%, not population size, are the root causes of today's ecological crisis.

As pioneering ecologist Barry Commoner once said, "Pollution begins not in the family bedroom, but in the corporate boardroom."

The authors of this piece are:

Ian Angus is co author of Too Many People?

He is editor of the ecosocialist journal

Simon Butler is co author of Too Many People?

He is editor of the Australian based Green Left Weekly

Pinkham Way Waste Plant Public Meeting

A packed public meeting organised by Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Green parties at Hollickwood School close to the proposed waste processing plant, attracted over a hundred people on Thursday (21st July) last night. As recently as this Tuesday, Haringey Council ‘put on hold,’ the plan because as they say on their website, the North London Waste Authority (NWLA) has failed to provide enough detail on the proposals. A decision on planning permission for the development will now be delayed until April 2012, by which time the NWLA should have submitted a more detailed plan.

The speakers at the event were, Colin Parish, a local resident and founder of The Pinkham Way Alliance, Darren Johnson, Green party London Assembly Member, and Quentin Given, Coordinator of Tottenham and Wood Green Friends of the Earth.

Quentin said in his statement to the meeting, "the problem existed because we have too much residual waste. The government had failed to seriously address this in its recent waste review. We should be asking our local MPs, if they support this campaign, to go back to government and get a more ambitious waste reduction policy; and asking councillors to improve recycling facilities. On the development itself, he said that we should not be making fuel from waste containing plastic – in effect a fossil fuel – and we should scrutinise the application to see what its impact on traffic overall would be.”


Colin, in his statement said, “This factory, will be seventy five feet high, with a chimney almost double that size. The NWLA say that this site is an ex sewage works, but that was fifty years ago, it is now lovely woodland. The plan is for over one thousand vehicle movements a day, in and out of the plant, twenty four hours a day, and we must fight it. This is the worst traffic junction in London in the daytime, and these plans will make this situation even worse.” He also made an appeal for donations to help his group’s legal costs, which he said was the best way to stop the plan going ahead.

Darren agreed that the legal challenge was very important but said “Local residents are a force to be reckoned with, and this had had an effect on Haringey Council’s action in delaying a decision.” He went on to say, “The politics is also important, the Mayor of London can, at the end of the day, decide on whether this plant is built, and with the decision delayed until April 2012, this makes it a big issue at the Mayoral and GLA elections in May next year, which is brilliant timing. This plan is based on the low levels of recycling which we have in London, but we could be achieving over 80% recycling, like they do in many countries in Europe. If we recycled more, we wouldn’t need such large plants as are being proposed. I noticed on the way here to this meeting that the recycle boxes are tiny compared to the big grey wheelie bins. It is also unfair on the people of this area to be expected to take the waste from several boroughs.”

A lively questions and answers session followed the speeches, with general opposition to the plan from all parts of the room. The meeting resolved to continue the fight against this massive scale waste plant, which would have a devastating effect on people’s quality of life in this part of north London.