Green Councillors Julien Pritchard and Rob Grant will be challenging the Council’s decision to keep the Tyseley Incinerator for another 10-15 years.
The Green Party councillors have requested a ‘call-in’ of the decision, asking the Council’s Sustainability & Transport Overview & Scrutiny to look again at the decision. The Committee will look at the request and the Council’s decision on Thursday 18th May.
Councillor Julien Pritchard said:
“The decision completely flies in the face of the city council’s climate change commitments.
“In 2019 the city council unanimously declared a climate emergency and promised to reach net zero by 2030. Awarding the incinerator contract to Veolia means one of the city’s largest emitters of carbon dioxide will keep burning waste for at least another 5 or 10 years after that.
“The Labour administration claim there are no alternatives to their climate trashing plan, but that’s because, despite running the Council for over 11 years, they’ve not seriously looked at alternatives to burning Brum’s waste.
“There are greener ways of dealing with most of what the Council decides to burn in the incinerator. Improving the city’s shameful recycling rates, increasing the number of different materials the Council recycles, and most importantly introducing a food waste collection, could drastically cut the amount of waste the city council burns.
“If done in the right way, introducing a food waste collection could also mean the return of a free garden waste collection. Meaning a win-win for residents.
“But our Labour-run Council seem to have ignored all of this in coming to their decision.
“Birmingham deserves bold leadership on climate and a better deal for residents. Unfortunately, this Labour Council is failing on both counts.
“We hope to show what alternatives look like and will be asking the Labour Cabinet to think again.”