Down in the rotten borough of Sutton, the Tom Brake-linked environmental charity Ecolocal has been silent on plans to build a giant incinerator in the borough. Incinerator operators Viridor will be allowed to burn rubbish for 25 years with a taxpayer-funded contract worth £1 billion. Ecolocal is the premier environmental organisation in the borough, yet they were oddly silent. 

Well, Brake himself certainly hasn’t been silent, at least not about this specific incinerator. In 2001, the Carshalton MP railed against incinerators in the Guardian, highlighting the potential for corporations to misuse them for profit, and their negative effects on air quality:

“big incinerator plants are more attractive to investors than small-scale recycling projects…Unless the government starts to tackle the problem of rising waste levels, there will be a dramatic increase in the number of incinerators. My guess is that we will end up with 60 to 70 incinerators under existing government policy… We don’t know all the health implications that result from incineration, but the release of dioxins is clearly a serious problem. Toxic ash from incinerators has turned up in some weird and wonderful places, including on farms as compost-type material.”

Brake certainly wasn’t a fan of incinerators back in the day, so why has the eco charity of which he is a trustee been so quiet about a plan to build one the size of Big Ben in his own borough? Curious…