Drive Biffa out of Ware, for safe, green non profit waste management

Last Monday myself and another comrade decided to get up off our armchairs and go and check out the local ware town council public meeting held to discuss the latest Hertfordshire waste management plans.

We turned up not thinking many would turn up on a chilly Monday evening to a usually dull council meeting. How wrong was I? There was possibly 200 to 300 there with more queuing out of the door. If people think people don’t care about what happens anymore they are so wrong.


Biffa the company who plans to build an incinerator just outside of our town faces strong opposition. After attending the meetings and protests over the planned incinerator in Hatfield last year this one in Ware not so far away seems equally as angry.
The meeting started with one of the councillors Tory dominated by the way with a report back from Hertfordshire county council on their latest updates. As it stands Biffa has planning permission till 2017 but at present haven’t submitted plans to start building anything.

This did not stop the local residents voicing their frustration and anger at said councillors. There were lots of good points. One was from a local teacher at a school not far from where the incinerator is planned for telling the councillors that this plan will damage the area and harm our children and their health. It is not right for Ware and it’s not right for anywhere.

Lots of people got up to raise similar points in opposition to the plans with many of the comments being targeted at the councillors at the front who seemed keen to not stay for longer than they had to.

My comrade then got up to speak and made the excellent points referring back to the earlier comments on the increase of rodent activity in the area if this goes through saying that the biggest rodent that needs to be driven out of this town is Biffa. Going on to say that Biffa are only interested in making a profit from this, not waste management or the environment they only have one thing in mind and that is increasing their profits.

My comrade at the meeting also raised the excellent point that waste management used to be controlled and run all in house by the councils in the local area. This is no longer the case and is out sourced to a private firm not interested in the town or the people living there only getting the cheapest deal for the plot of land and the maximum amount of profit for dealing with the waste.

It is true we have a waste problem in Hertfordshire and across the country but burning it into the already polluted atmosphere for profit is not the answer. Greater emphasis on recycling and greener ideas is what needed not is purely going for the cheapest and most polluting option to get the matter done and off their hands.

My comrade also did a bit of ad hock democracy by asking all in the room to put up their hands if they are against Biffa and the incinerator the whole rooms hands went up all apart from the councillors at the front who felt a bit taken a back and were not prepared to have the meeting show such opposition like that. At that point they felt they were loosing control of the meeting so quickly hurried on to ask if there were any further serious points which angered people even more.

Many people in the meeting felt like the local councillors do not represent our views and have failed to stand up for us. Many hostile comments were thrown at them including how much are you getting in expenses for being here tonight.

One councillor I believe to be a Lib Dem found this too much to take and shouted back NOT A SINGLE PENNY! Clearly we’d touched a nerve.

But the failure of the councillors to firmly oppose this plan by Biffa claiming their hands are tied and its county who decide anyway is a big cop out in my eyes and shows a lack of fight and determination to represent the people who elected them.

I suggested as we were walking out that if a candidate proposing to oppose the whole thing in Ware and elsewhere saying no to all incinerators and burning of waste following that meeting they’d gain a big echo I reckon. Standing against these Tories who cant stand up for those who elected them would really put it up them I think.

Personally waste is a big issue but making money out of it and also with it possibly leading to environmental issues and health issues is not something I’d support and will be continuing to monitor this project and be opposing it all the way not just in Ware but anywhere as it is wrong full stop.

How over packaged goods are runing our environment

As we all know in this country and many developed nations around the world the issue of waste and recycling is a huge issue one that governments after governments have failed to really address.

It saddens me when what you buy at the supermarket has huge amounts of excess packaging and a lot of plastic in use too. I think to myself our poor planet is going to have to absorb all this at some point and waht good will that be doing to our planet ?

I do care for our environment and i try to buy items that have as less packaging on them as possible to minimise the impact of my consumption. But reality tells me i'm having no impact at all due to the habbits of the erest of society and the world.

I talked about on twitter a few weeks back about the possiblity of one day getting my own allotment to grow vegetables and produce for myself and others in my local area. I feel that with the land we have in this country we could be doing a hell of a lot more with it. Too often greedy rich farmers are leaving acres of land set aside and recieving grants and money for doing this. If farmers in this country focused more on producing more for the nation rather than their own back pockets we may not need to import quite so much from abroad. Growing our own produce will not only help our own economy with things we can sell to other countries that only we can grow for example our own british straweberries are world famous for their sweetness. But my other point is that our own produce can be sold at farmers markets or farm shops for example with minimal packaging and resulting in less waste. We need to get back to the days where we grew a lot more. During the second world war there was a phrase dig for britain. As the trade routes were mainly blocked by war ships and mines we couldnt import everything we needed from the continent so we had to relly on growing our own. There was a big up surge in people growing their own foods.
Now i'm not suggesting we need another world war to get us back to those ways where we produce more for ourselves but i do think its about time we stopped rellying on importing items so much which more often than not come in a over packaged form.

Growing from our own ground will be good for our own environment and positive for all who get to expereince home grown produce for a change.

Of course we will have to be careful to not over produce and leading to a surplus but even if we did in my vision for a socialist society the surplus would be feed back either to the ground to grow more or spread out equally to all of the people. Not what would happen in a capitalist society where any surplus is turned into extra profit for only those at the very top.