Greenpeace have shut down Sheffield's incinerator as part of their campaign against the highly polluting practice of incinerating domestic rubbish.
Sheffield has been branded the worst incinerator in England with 156 pollution breaches over the last 2 years.
Already the Sheffield City Council has been taken to court by the EU over high levels of pollution and extremely toxic dioxins consistently being released into the atmosphere by the incinerator. The resulting fines and the costs of improving the incinerator have virtually bankrupted the council. This debt is the reason behind the privatisation of the council waste service. This is likely to be taken over by the French company Onyx in the next few months.
There is also a daily picket by council workers against the privatisation at the gates to the incinerator.
There are three Greenpeace activists at the top of the incinerator chimney and they have a lot of supplies, so they should be there for a while. Inside the plant there are people locked on to machinery, preventing anything from working.
This should go on for a few days so stay tuned for further developments. The bin men are also planning a series of one day strikes against the privatisation of their services. The next is likely to be bank holiday Monday.
Both of these campaigns need support, even if this is just to boost moral.
There is a public meeting about the incinerator at 2pm on Saturday at St John's Church, Bernard Street (near the Hyde Park tram stop).
For up to date info on the action plus the wider issues of incinerators and the problems they cause check out Greenpeace's web site:
http://greenpeace.org.uk/contentlookup.cfm?SiteKeyParam=HOME1