GLOBAL ACTIVIST ALLIANCE DECLARES WAR AGAINST INCINERATION
As
Governments around the Adopts a Global Treaty Against Persistent
Organic Pollutants (POPs)
Stockholm/Manila
, 23 May 2001 As governments around the world prepare to formally
adopt and sign a global treaty to eliminate persistent organic
pollutants or POPs from the environment, an international alliance
of non-governmental organizations today declared war against
all forms of waste incineration as part of the POPs problem
and certainly not any kind of solution to it.
The treaty aims to eliminate all POPs and lists twelve substances
for priority action. The dirty dozen include intentionally produced
chemicals such as pesticides and PCBs, as well as by-products
such as furans and the cancer-causing dioxins. These dioxin
and furan compounds are routinely released as unwanted by-products
of industries that use chlorine and from waste incinerators.
The Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance (GAIA) (1) therefore warned
governments against continuing to build incinerators of all
kinds and against rushing to dispose of POPs by burning or burying
their stockpiles of POPs wastes, but to adopt appropriate and
safer alternative destruction technologies instead.
We cannot solve a disaster with yet another disaster," said
Von Hernandez, GAIA Southern Coordinator from the Philippines.
Rather than solving the POPs problem, incineration perpetuates
it, and traps developing countries and countries with transitional
economies, into very expensive, obsolete and unsustainable waste
management regimes."
Anti-incineration activists around the world find new justification
in the new obligations of the Stockholm Convention which calls
for POPs wastes to be destroyed or irreversibly transformed
so they no longer possess the characteristics of POPs. And,
the Convention calls incineration, including so called state-of-the-art
forms of burning wastes has been identified as a major source
of the most dangerous POP dioxin. Further, the Convention calls
for substitution of alternatives for any processes, including
incineration, which produce dioxins.
GAIA calls on proven zero waste policies such as minimizing
packaging, composting and recycling for dealing with non-hazardous
solid wastes, and the use of proven, existent non-combustion
alternative destruction technologies that will chemically or
biologically destroy POPs and other wastes without producing
new POPs compounds in the process.
The alliance praised recent initiatives that point the way to
an incinerator-free world:
- Recently,
the Global Environment Facility (GEF) approved an NGO conceived
pilot project to set up environmentally safe non-incineration
technologies to destroy stockpiles of persistent organic
pollutants (POPs) in the Philippines and Slovakia(2).
- In
a similar development, Denmark , a long-time promoter of
the use of cement kilns to dispose of pesticides waste in
developing countries has announced that the Danish Environmental
Protection Agency, due to environmental and social concerns,
will no longer be funding aid projects that utilize cement
kilns for hazardous waste disposal and will be looking to
the newer non-combustion technologies for future on-site
disposal projects.
- The
country of Slovakia has recently banned the use of PVC plastic.
PVC plastic when burned openly or incinerators will produce
dioxins and furans.
- South
Africa has recently announced an agreement to utilize a
sodium based chemical, non-combustion destruction technology
to destroy PCBs stockpiles and wastes.
For
more information, please contact Von Hernandez, GAIA Southern
Coordinator at mobile nos. (63-917 5263050) or see http://www.no-burn.org
NOTES
(1) GAIA is an expanding alliance of individuals, non-governmental
organizations, community-based groups, academics and others
working to end incineration of all forms of waste and to promote
sustainable waste prevention and discard management practices.
Founded in Johannesburg, South Africa during the Fifth Intergovernmental
Negotiations Committee meeting on POPs (INC 5), the alliance
is a culmination of a series of gatherings about incineration
and alternatives held around the world in recent years. Since
GAIA members are committed both to ending incineration and to
promoting alternative, safe, economical and just discard management
systems, the name GAIA represents both a Global Anti-Incinerator
Alliance and a Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.
(2) IN April 2001, an NGO conceived pilot project to utilize
non-combustion, alternative POPs destruction technologies was
finally approved by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF)
and participating governments. Initially, the GEF project will
involve destroying the PCB stockpiles of two nations the Slovak
Republic and the Philippines and will be implemented by the
United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO).
The Philippines and Slovakia were chosen as the pilot sites
for the global project because of their huge stockpiles of the
cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), one of the
deadliest POPs being targeted for elimination worldwide. The
Philippines also had the advantage over other countries of being
the first in the world to ban waste incineration.
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