Greenpeace volunteer climber Mark Strutt on chimney at SELCHP
Mark Strutt has been at the top of the 100m chimney stack since monday morning, helping to keep South East London incinerator shut down. He tell us what it's like up there in 70mph winds:
I'm Mark Strutt, I work for Greenpeace as a campaigner. We are currently fighting to stop the expansion of incineration across the UK. In Britain we have 15 incinerators operating at the moment but more are threatened up and down the country.
Tens of thousands of people have voiced their opposition to incineration. And the government itself has said that incinerators emit such dangerous pollutants that their emissions ought to be stopped altogether. And that was the Secretary for the Environment speaking. The government has done nothing though, so Greenpeace has decided to do something to stop this cancer of incinerators spreading across Britain.
On monday, we arrived at 7 o'clock in the morning. We were able to enter the site unobstructed and we unloaded all of our gear. We carried it to the chimney where we got inside and locked the door behind us before scaling the ladders to the top of the chimney.
It took us five hours to do that because we have with us enough food, water and other equipment to last us for quite a long time. Every day we stay here we can prevent pollution coming out of this incinerator. The longer we can stay here, the more pollution we can stop.
This incinerator in south London is one of the biggest in the country. It's also used as a model by the incineration industry. It is an example of the brand new incinerator that is supposed to be state of the art technology. And the government is allowing scores more of these things to be built all over Britain.
Even though this is one of the newest ones in the country, it still emits very high levels of pollution, extremely dangerous pollution. For example there is a chemical called dioxin and this incinerator emits enough dioxin to give one million people what the government say is the maximum safe dose every single day.
The government must not be allowed to gamble with people's health in this way. We're shutting this incinerator down to stop these sorts of emissions, protecting the health of the people of Britain.
