ON June 29 2021, Envar Ltd made an application to expand their site at Woodhurst, a small village situated near St Ives in Huntingdonshire. The application included plans for a healthcare waste energy recovery facility, a cunningly greenwashed term for a waste incinerator.

Concerned about the environmental impact, communities and activists from all surrounding villages came together and formed the People Opposing Woodhurst Incinerator campaign group (Powi).

For the people living in and around Woodhurst, these plans cast a fuggy grey shadow of uncertainty over the nearby free-range egg farm, fruit farm, and Silks Farm, a nursery for infants. The Raptor Centre, a charity for the rescue and rehabilitation of birds of prey, is also very close by, along with residential areas.

After a two-year campaign working with local authorities, politicians from across the political spectrum, and local media, most of who were supportive or at least sympathetic to the local opposition, planning permission was refused.

This remained the case until July 29 this year, a mere 25 days after the new Labour government won the general election by running on a platform of change, democracy and championing environmental issues.

Although it was the previous Conservative government which had recovered Envar’s appeal earlier in the year, it was Labour that saw fit to effectively rubber-stamp it, throwing away two years of the campaign group’s hard work without a second thought.

There is no need nor local desire for this incinerator, and our opposition to it is not simply a case of “Nimbyism.” In this era of rising political consciousness, communities often know all too well what’s in their best interests, and we are more than capable of researching the implications of such issues. There are multiple reasons as to why we oppose such an incinerator.

It would be fuelled by medical waste, largely from the NHS. Yet, the NHS plans to reduce their clinical waste year on year by 8 per cent with the aim of reducing carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2032 and net zero by 2040. What will the incinerator burn when NHS contracts inevitably dry up?

According to data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for councils with above-average rates of incineration, there is a clear correlation between higher rates of incineration and lower recycling rates. The presence of incinerators and continued austerity measures can, therefore, be seen to reduce the incentive to commit to the three Rs: reduce, reuse and recycle.

The incineration plant, as mentioned, is to be built next to the Raptor Foundation and working farms. This raises profound concerns about how emissions from the plant would affect the wellbeing of animals being treated and raised there and on the produce of nearby farms, as well as the general health of locals.

The Labour government’s war on “Nimbyism,” a shallow ruse to quash local democracy, has allowed a rubber-stamping of this waste incinerator with scant regard for environmental concerns raised by locals and their own policies.

Currently, there are no less than eight other applications for new incinerators in East Anglia and around 50 more proposed in England. Are we not facing an overcapacity of waste incinerators? Data from the UK Without Incineration network suggests that we are.

Envar’s parent company, Heathcote Holdings, has also had previous environmental policy violations. In 2012, they were fined £112,700 by the Environmental Agency after subsidiaries Countrystyle Recycling and FGS AGRI repeatedly falsified paperwork and dumped waste on golf courses and farms. If other companies being run by this group can’t be trusted to adhere to environmental standards, what makes anyone think that Envar will?

Which brings to mind another question: how exactly will this incinerator, and others, be regulated?

Rather than being taxed or fined for exceeding emissions, incinerators — sorry, “healthcare waste energy recovery facilities” — are able to purchase carbon credits from the government and trade excess units in markets. The government establishes an initial maximum amount of carbon units a company can purchase so as to not exceed emission levels of CO2 in what’s known as a cap-and-trade system.

The commodification of waste emissions as a solution to environmental issues follows a certain perverse economic logic insofar as introducing instruments of fictitious capital produces nothing but fictitious solutions and, of course, profit for those who have scant need of it.

The abundance of carbon credits, 69 million for 2024, for auction in the Emissions Trading Scheme, coupled with a low auction reserve price of £22 per ton of emissions, means there is currently little incentive to reduce them. As the cap lowers year on year, it’s obvious that the market value of traded carbon credits will balloon, resulting in a lucrative payout for some.

Given that Envar intends to use the heat energy from burning medical waste to produce other products, such as biofertiliser pellets and composts, it’d be remiss of me not to point out that the logic of the cap-and-trade scheme means the cost of production will perpetually rise and eventually become unfeasible, all while causing environmental harm.

Of course, the increasing costs of carbon credits will inevitably be passed on to consumers while adding precisely zero additional value to the product.

These types of solutions merely displace environmental issues into the future as economic viability, profit, and greenwashed terminology become the over-riding impetus rather than scientific and social reality. Waste-to-energy facilities, such as this one, are not “clean energy” facilities. No such thing exists.

One can only surmise that the lack of response to these burning questions, if you excuse the pun, indicates that the short-term interests of big business are taking precedence over the long-term health and wellbeing of residents and communities. Democracy is nothing if it is not a cornerstone of British society, and to see a Labour government trample over us in such a manner is a kick in the teeth, to say the least.

These decisions should be in the hands of the communities which businesses purport to serve rather than those of the suited-and-booted, money-minded middle managers that inhabit Parliament.

Thanks to the government, the only options left for appeal are now a judicial review, which the Secretary of State can overturn, or a High Court battle, both of which are costly. Indeed, the boilerplate letter I received from the Secretary of State all but said “tough sh*t,” and when our MP questioned her about the incinerator in parliament, she glibly replied that she hadn’t been involved with the decision.

The lack of empathy and concern is troubling, as is the hypocrisy.

In the meantime, Powi will soldier on and do whatever it takes to prevent profiteers, greenwashers and growth-fixated politicians from foisting a filth-spewing incinerator upon our communities.

Environmentally conscious politicians, groups and activists must call for a moratorium on new incinerator applications similar to those in Scotland and Wales. We need an environment plan that focuses on programmes of energy efficiency, conservation and waste disposal, reduction and recycling, using the most advanced energy-efficient and environmentally friendly technologies.

In 1883, Friedrich Engels wrote in his seminal work Dialectics of Nature that each conquest of nature takes its revenge on us and that “… at every step, we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature — but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other beings of being able to know and correctly apply its laws.”

We do not exist outside of nature, and we should not allow big businesses to greenwash our lived reality by mere manipulations of language, nor should they be allowed by any means to ride roughshod over the needs, wants and desires of communities for short-term gain. The environment will eventually bite back, and in fact, it already is.

People, in other words, must come before profit, and so must the environment.