Campaiging against Veolia – particularly for those in North London

JfJfP mailing, 12 January 2011

We in JfJfP, as part of our policy of boycotting the occupation, support the campaign to boycott Veolia in the UK where it is a major provider of municipal waste collection services.

Below is information about the campaign, North London Waste Authority, and Veolia.

A new campaign is being run in North London to derail Veolia from NLWA (North London Waste Authority). The campaign to have Veolia removed from the NLWA procurement is winnable, possibly within months. To achieve this we need a lot of local support, so please inform as many of your contacts in the London Boroughs of: Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey, Islington and Waltham Forest.

We will be holding our first informal meeting on WEDNESDAY, 19TH JANUARY at 6.30pm at The Regent (downstairs), 201-203 Liverpool Road, Islington, N1 1LX. The Regent serves food (pizza oven on the premises) and drinks. If you know of anyone who lives in those boroughs and would like to be involved can you please forward this email to them.

Please do not hesitate to contact Yael Kahn [of Islington Friends of Yibna]: 07880 731 865 or Samrina Mir [of Merton PSC]: 07947 493 650.

NLWA Background

The North London Waste Authority is the statutory waste disposal authority for Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey, Islington and Waltham Forest. On 21 April 2010, the NLWA invited proposals from waste companies to bid for the separate contracts for waste services and fuel use. This is a 25-35 year contract from 2014. The intention is to award the contract in October 2012. Veolia ES put forward a proposal and have been invited by NLWA, alongside several other bidders, to submit outline solutions for providing future waste and fuel use.

The Chair of NLWA is Councillor Clyde Loakes (Labour Party) with Vice Chairs Councillor M Cohen (Conservative) and G Meehan (Labour). The other members from the 7 boroughs are:

The campaign is very keen to have a noticeable lobby of the 14 Authority members (2 from each of the seven boroughs):

Barnet: Councillor M Cohen (C) and B Coleman (C)

Camden: Councillor T Blackwell (L) and A Mason (L)

Enfield: Councillor A Stafford (L) and C Murphy (L)

Hackney: Councillor S Lloyd (L) and F Demirci (L)

Haringey: Councillor N Canver (L) and G Meehan (L)

Islington: Councillor R Greening (L) and P Smith (L)

Waltham Forest: Councillor A Akram (L) and C Loakes (L)

Veolia Background

Veolia, a large French multinational, profits from Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

Veolia is helping to build and operate a tramway linking illegal settlements in East Jerusalem with Israel. Not only do the settlements contravene article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention forbidding an occupier transferring its own civilians into the territory it occupies, but in most cases the establishment of the Israeli settlements involved war crimes too. The tramway tightens Israel’s hold on occupied East Jerusalem, ties the settlements more firmly into Israel and undermines chances of a just peace for the Palestinian people.

Veolia also operates bus services for Israeli settlers, running them between the illegal settlements and Israel. The buses travel on settler roads, which have decimated Palestinian towns and villages by stealing their land for construction, and cut them off from each other. Palestinians are forbidden from using these settler-only apartheid roads, which are one of the means of restricting their movement within the West Bank.

Through its subsidiary, TMM, Veolia also collects refuse from illegal settlements at the Tovlan landfill site in the occupied Jordan Valley.

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keyword: binveolia