Talli Nauman , July 12, 2003, Mexico.

Like so many summer vacationers, I took off for the beach the day school let out, only to be pummeled by waves crested with discarded plastic bottles and other trash.

One of my friends who went with me said they ought to burn those plastic containers before they get washed down from the hillsides into the sea. Her mom said they ought to bury the stuff.

I had to break the news to them that burning plastic is a big no-no, since it creates dioxins, which get into air, soil, water and food, causing cancer, immune system damage, reproductive and developmental problems.

Covering up the evidence under the ground doesn’t solve anything, either; the best way to prevent the build-up of plastic containers is simply to avoid them or to opt for other materials, such as glass and aluminum, when the choice is available. These other materials are more readily recyclable so less likely to end up as waste, while at the same time their recycling reduces pressure on limited natural resources.

But beyond what individuals can do as consumers to reduce proliferation of unwanted plastic and the even worse pollution created by burning it in the backyard, government and industry have to get involved to a much greater extent in minimizing this scourge.

That’s what the Global Day of Action on Waste and Incineration this July 14 is all about. More than 235 groups in more than 60 countries including Mexico are supporting the event organized by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA).

Unlike many worldwide environmental actions, this one is put together outside the U.N. auspices, as an independent initiative. However, like its precursor event last year in June, it is timed to coincide with the opening day of the U.N. International Negotiating Committee meeting in Geneva on the implementation of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.

In October, Mexico signed the Stockholm treaty, which aims to eliminate and promote the use of alternatives to the worst toxics known to science, including dioxins, 69 percent of which come from incineration worldwide.

But this year, over the protests of domestic participants in the GAIA network, the Mexican government passed the General Law for Prevention and Integrated Management of Residues, one big farce that flies in the face of the treaty, because it promotes the generation of dioxins by encouraging the construction and use of waste incinerators.

On top of that, the government published proposed standards at the end of last month to facilitate operation of incinerators, and the public only has about six weeks left to provide input on the proposal.

More developed countries have been shutting down their incinerators, as scientific findings and public pressure against the technology have mounted. For example, by the end of the 1990s, the 10-year-old incinerator industry in the United States was nearly defunct, after opposition defeated more than 300 municipal incinerator proposals.

The demise of the incinerator as a solution to waste disposal is documented in Waste Incineration: A Dying Technology, written by Neil Tangri for GAIA’s release on this global day of action. Among other things, the book explains the alternatives to incineration, beginning with the basic tenet of reducing toxic inputs in production.

While more technologically advanced nations are getting away from incinerators, it is silly for Mexico to be embracing this disposal method, not to mention untenable in the face of its international commitment to the Stockholm convention. Meanwhile, Mexico doesn’t even have a register of the basic data about how much dioxins and other toxic waste it is generating.

This baseline information must be collected, made available to the public, and used to underpin incentives for industry to cut down on hazardous inputs and outputs. At the same time, the government should follow the precautionary and preventive principles: That is to say that the new residues law and the corresponding standards should be modified to shelter people and the rest of the environment from the same kind of harmful effects incinerators have had in other countries.

Talli Nauman is a founder and co-director of Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness, a project initiated with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1994. Her experience includes more than 25 years of photojournalism in the Americas, a master's degree in International Journalism and a bachelor's degree in Visual and Environmental Studies. She can be reached at jaguar@infosel.net.mx

GAIA thanks The Herald Mexico and Talli Nauman for sharing the unpublished version of this article with us.