'Stop the burn': Health workers call for Newcastle Council to withdraw from Teesside waste incinerator plans

More than 100 health workers are calling for Newcastle City Council to withdraw from plans to use a new waste incinerator on Teesside.

Under the project, waste from seven local authorities would be shipped to the site in Redcar to be burned. However health professionals believe this will "widen health inequalities".

On Saturday, Medact North East delivered an open letter to the council raising concerns about the health impacts of the proposed development of the Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility. The group also staged a demonstration outside of the Civic Centre in Newcastle while wearing scrubs and holding placards.

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The letter says that the incinerator, which would burn up to 512,000 tonnes of waste per year, would release air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions which have negative health impacts. It says this would unfairly affect communities on Teesside, who already face significant health challenges.

Instead of these plans, health workers are asking for investment in waste reduction, re-use and recycling, which they say will create more jobs as a result.

During the protest, Dr Sarah Walpole, who works in the North East, told ChronicleLive: "We're here today because we're asking Newcastle City Council to withdraw their plans to ship our waste from Newcastle to Teesside for burning.

"The reason we're opposed to that is that burning waste is bad for air quality and bad for human health. As health professionals, we're really concerned that we're not just treating disease but we're actually doing everything we can, as a society, to reduce the amount of disease that people are facing.

"So we think it's really inequitable that we, from Newcastle, send all our waste to Teesside, which is one of the areas which has the poorest health outcomes in the UK, to be burnt.

"So we really demand that Newcastle City Council pull out of this scheme, which would cause greater health inequalities, and that we look to a cleaner, healthier future and we use alternatives like recycling - which we aren't using enough.

"We don't need more incinerators in the UK. We need to stick to cleaner alternatives like recycling our waste and reducing the amount of waste we produce."

Dr Matthew Keegan, a doctor and Medact North East member, said the project will result in waste from across the whole region getting dumped on an area that has already been overburdened by pollution, inequality and Government neglect.

He said: "This is unfortunately an all too common story - incinerators are three times more likely to be built in low income areas which are already at the sharp end of health inequalities. As a doctor living and working in the North East, I’m not going to stand by as more and more incinerators get built across Teesside, and my council tax and my waste are used to feed this harm."

In response, Newcastle City Council said: "The Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility (TV ERF) project is essential to the region and will allow the partner authorities to safely and sustainably treat the rubbish left over after recycling that is produced by more than one and a half million people across the region – avoiding landfill, which is the only viable alternative.

"Energy-from-Waste (EfW) facilities like the TV ERF are widely in use across the UK and are a proven, safe and reliable solution to treat waste. They are subject to intense regulatory scrutiny through both the permitting process and on an ongoing basis once operational.

"The regulatory context, across planning, recycling and waste policy, environmental protection, and health protection allows for the development and operation of the TV ERF and EfW is now a mature industry which has been subject to much scrutiny over decades. As such, the partner authorities remain of the view that the TV ERF remains the safest and best environmental solution for the treatment of local waste left over after recycling."