On 14 September, health professionals from the group Medact North East delivered an open letter to Newcastle City Council raising concerns about the health impacts of the proposed development of the Tees Valley Energy Recovery Facility (TVERF), an incinerator planned for Redcar. The letter was signed by over 100 health professionals from across the region and handed in the week following International Clean Air Day 2024. Health professionals and allied groups staged a demonstration outside Newcastle City Council, wearing scrubs and holding placards.
Open letter
The open letter expresses health and environmental concerns about the proposed incinerator, which would burn up to 512,000 tonnes of waste per year from seven councils across the North East, including rubbish from hundreds of thousands of Newcastle residents.
The incinerator would release air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions which have multiple negative health impacts. This would increase health inequalities, unfairly affecting communities on Teesside who already face significant public health challenges.
Grangetown, the site of the proposed incinerator, already has among the highest death rates from respiratory disease, and lowest average healthy life expectancy in England.
Health care workers ask for investment in waste reduction, re-use and recycling instead – which they say would create far more jobs than incineration. They claim that if Newcastle City Council withdraw support, it could successfully stop this project from going ahead.
These developments take place on the back of a recent furore around incineration nationally – with a temporary ban on new incinerators under the previous Conservative government. There is now mounting pressure on the new environment secretary to place a ban on new incinerators due to economic, environmental, and health concerns.
Comments from Medact, Stop Incineration North East, and the Green Party
Dr Matthew Keegan, medical doctor and local Medact member, said:
“This 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. 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.”
Paul Foster, member of Stop Incineration North East said:
“Building new incinerators on Teesside is irresponsible and unnecessary. We already have more incinerators than we have to waste to burn, in the region, so the only ones benefiting here are the private waste companies, profiting at the expense of our communities, our councils, and our planet.”
Nick Hartley, Green Party councillor for Byker, said:
“This project doesn’t make sense and will not achieve what we are told. It locks Newcastle taxpayers into a costly thirty year contract with private waste companies and incentivises the creation of more waste, dumping it on the poorest areas of the North East, harming people’s health and the planet. It’s time Newcastle City Council withdrew support for this harmful project, and chose to create jobs in expanding recycling instead.”
This article is based on a media release from Medact
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