Stop the Splott incinerator (leaflet)

Last year, a campaign of ordinary people stopped Cardiff Council's plans to build an incinerator on Ocean Way, which would have brought pollution and traffic to Splott, Adamsdown and Tremorfa. Now, the Council have brought back the same scheme, at the same location, with the same problems. We urgently need to campaign to stop this incinerator, this time for good.

Where there's fire, there's smoke
Air quality in north Adamsdown is already dangerously poor. An incinerator would add nitrogen dioxide (NO2) from the incinerator itself, plus the exhaust, and odour, from 144 garbage truck arrivals every day -- that's one every four minutes. An incinerator would make noise 24 hours a day, ruin the view from several homes, and risk contaminating groundwater. It would sit half a mile from a water conservation area. And the problem of transporting tonnes of hazardous fly-ash to England still has not been solved!

False promises
Viridor, the company proposing the incinerator, claims it will create a few jobs and generate 30,000 homes' worth of electricity to sell to the National Grid, assuming the incinerator will operate at full capacity all the time. No incinerator in Britain has ever achieved more than 65% efficiency. Viridor were asked to report on the impact of alternate plans...and simply refused!

Nobody wants it!
Most importantly, Cardiff's residents are being ignored. We are not NIMBYs; we all want to do our bit. The Council gives us complicated waste disposal schemes and even uses anti-terrorism legislation against fly-tippers, but they've never presented a rational solution for the city's garbage. Councillors have admitted they've brought in poorly-researched schemes “even though some red lights were flashing.” The incinerator is a bad plan. We can do better.

A greener alternative
Incineration is the glorified equivalent of burning rubbish in a barrel. In Europe, many communities are using an elegant, simple technology for waste disposal. Anaerobic digestion is a scaling-up of composting which uses natural processes to convert organic waste into fertiliser, creating carbon-neutral electricity as a by-product. An anaerobic digestor in Trident Park would be silent, produce no fly-ash, and cost less to operate. Most inorganic waste in Cardiff, meanwhile, comes not from homes but from government offices and construction sites. Why can't Cardiff Council get itself or big business up to scratch environmentally?

For a democratic, environmentalist Cardiff
To get an environmentally-sound waste disposal scheme, we need a government that looks out for us, not for multi-million-pound companies like Viridor. Electing fighting working-class councillors and AMs, subject to constant review and recall by the people they represent, will get bad plans rejected and good ones put forward; meanwhile, a “Yes” vote in the Assembly powers referendum means the Welsh Assembly Government will have access to the resources it needs to create green jobs and impose tough sustainability rules on companies. Join our campaign, get involved, and get active, and together we can make Cardiff Council recycle something other than its incinerator plans!