Today I walked part of the 150 mile 'London Loop' with Chris and Clementine. Last year we walked the whole of the 78 mile 'Capital Ring' so the Loop is the next challenge. We walked from Gordon Hill to Enfield Lock today, and unfortunately saw a lot of dumping, like the above fridge. I just don't get it. It seems like a lot of effort to go to in order to get rid of something. We saw an oven in a river too.

Towards the end of the walk I spotted the infamous incinerator at Enfield - the largest in the UK. This is where much of North London's unrecycled waste ends up. In eastern Enfield, which sits downwind of the incinerator and is exposed to smoke from the chimney, the death rate of babies up to a year old is between 10 and 12 per thousand of population. The national average death rate for babies is 5.2 per thousand. It's thought that because they burn plastics, hazardous and radioactive waste the chimneys emit 'PM 2.5' particulates which lodge in people's lungs and cause asthma and cancer as well as rises in infant mortality.

Something to bear in mind the next time one fails to recycle...