In the second of a series scrutinising Enfield Council’s progress on meeting climate targets, Carol Fisk of Enfield Climate Action Forum’s land use working group examines progress on waste and recycling

Six years after declaring a climate emergency, Enfield Council is failing to keep its waste and recycling commitments.

Reducing waste and improving recycling are vital for tackling climate change, cutting greenhouse gas emissions throughout a product’s life cycle. In 2020, Enfield Council pledged to reduce household waste from 605kg to 412kg per household by 2022, and to raise recycling rates from 36% to 49%.

Neither target has been met. Recycling in Enfield has not exceeded 38% since the Climate Action Plan was adopted.

Comparable London boroughs, with a similar mix of houses and flats, perform far better. Meanwhile, the amount of rubbish produced per household in Enfield is not shrinking but growing and remains higher than in similar boroughs.

The result is a toxic combination: more waste and less recycling, driving ever greater reliance on the Edmonton incinerator. Burning waste is one of the most carbon-intensive options available, undermining the borough’s wider climate commitments. Yet the Edmonton incinerator’s emissions are excluded from the council’s Climate Action Plan.

This loophole hides a major source of pollution, giving the council little incentive to cut waste or improve recycling, even though burning more waste has disastrous consequences for the climate.

The council shows little willingness to face up to issues. Scrutiny of climate performance is almost non-existent, while Enfield’s new Local Plan, already costing over £7m, does not set adequate policies for improving waste and recycling.

Residents have a right to expect transparency, honesty, and credible policies. Instead, uncomfortable truths are ignored, and the gap between rhetoric and reality grows wider.

As we showed in the first article of this series on heating, declaring a ‘climate emergency’ is not just about setting ambitious targets. It demands accountability when things go off track, practical steps to close the gap, and openness with residents about progress.

Enfield has rightly called climate change an “existential threat to life on earth”. That means waste and recycling cannot be allowed to languish at the bottom of the agenda.

If Enfield is serious about tackling climate change, it must stop hiding incinerator emissions and start treating waste reduction and recycling as a priority.

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