Gaia

A new report by the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) provides the clearest and most comprehensive evidence to date of how better waste management is critical to the climate fight, while building resilience, creating jobs, and promoting thriving local economies.

In 2012, the Drakenstein municipality signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Interwaste, a waste management company, to construct a municipal waste incinerator to address the municipalities waste issues.

The resistance to this municipal incinerator involved several key actors, this included the Drakenstein Environmental Watch (DEW), Wellington Association Against the Incinerator (WAAI), groundWork (gW), South African Waste Pickers Association (SAWPA), GAIA, community residents, vulnerable groups that
would have been affected by the project, water experts, engineers and legal clinics were just some of the agents that supported the resistance of the municipal waste incinerator.

En 2021 GAIA presentó gracias al trabajo de sus miembros en cuatro países, una investigación crítica con información inédita sobre las importaciones de residuos plásticos que estaban ingresando a países de América Latina. En esta oportunidad, compartiremos los principales hallazgos de la segunda ronda de reportes investigativos realizados por dichos miembros de GAIA en cuatro países de la región: México, Ecuador, Chile y Argentina.

Además, se incluyen mapas que grafican las importaciones y exportaciones de residuos plásticos, siendo este último un elemento nuevo dentro de las investigaciones debido al hallazgo de cifras de exportación dentro de América Latina e incluso hacia Estados Unidos, el mayor exportador de plásticos a nuestro continente.

Five illustrated booklets – Plastics Crisis: Challenges, Advances and Relationship with Wastepickers.

Contents:

• Plastic Life Cycle and the Globalized Socio-Environmental Crisis.
• The Plastic Production.
• Toxic Additives in Plastic.
• False Solutions and Businesses that Aim to End Pollution.
• The global plastic treaty to Control its Complete Life Cycle.

Cartilhas ilustradas sobre a crise do plástico.

Conteúdo:

• O ciclo de vida do plástico e a crise socioambiental globalizada.
• A produção do plástico.
• Aditivos tóxicos do plástico.
• As falsas soluções e os negócios que pretendem acabar com a poluição.
• O tratado global de plásticos para controlar seu ciclo de vida completo.

Cartillas ilustradas sobre la crisis de los plásticos.

Contenidos:

• El ciclo de la vida del plástico y la crisis socioambiental globalizada.
• La producción del plástico.
• Los aditivos tóxicos del plástico.
• Falsas soluciones.
• El Tratado global de plásticos.

This paper, meant for city and municipal officials, gives a brief introduction to incineration. It aims to inform readers about the technical basics

of incineration plants and their pitfalls and equip them with questions to ask when they are faced with incinerator proposals. Aside from being a guide for officials faced with incinerator proposals, this paper hopes to help decision-makers aim for long-term directions toward sustainability and advocate for better and safer resource and waste management systems in their localities.

In 2020, GAIA released an alert identifying an alarming trend: legislators were introducing bills to promote the expansion of so-called “chemical recycling” (also known as “advanced recycling”, “waste-to-fuel”, “waste-to-plastic,” “plastic transformation,” and “plastics renewal”), eight of which had been signed into law. This unproven waste management strategy is endorsed by the plastic industry via its lobbying arm, the American Chemistry Council. This alert is an update on that trend, which the petrochemical industry has accelerated. Since our first alert, eleven more states have passed such laws, bringing the total to 20 since 2017. These laws relax pollution regulations and/or provide subsidies for these facilities, with some explicitly defining them as recycling facilities, despite numerous reports from media, watchdog, and nonprofit groups concluding that they are little more than plastic burning. In addition to these threats, this alert contains suggested intervention points for advocates and highlights legislative approaches that counter the expansion of these technologies.

Solid waste management is rapidly emerging as one of the most problematic sectors in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Four case studies illustrate some of the principal problems in the CDM’s approach to waste management: further impoverishment of the urban poor, competition with recycling, and lack of additionally. These case studies suggest that the CDM’s interventions in the sector are doing more harm than good; in particular, the Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) issued by the CDM often do not represent real reductions at all. The gravity of the problem has prompted the CDM’s own Methodology Panel to undertake a top-to-bottom review of the sector. This review, however, is unlikely to resolve the contradictions inherent in the carbon credit scheme.

Se requiere un esfuerzo a nivel internacional para que las emisiones de metano disminuyan significativamente a escala mundial, y en los tres sectores que más emisiones generan : agricultura, energía y residuos. Según la Evaluación Mundial del Metano (GMA) del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente, las emisiones de metano deberían reducirse en al menos un 45% durante esta década, la cual es decisiva para la acción climática.

Once faced with waste management challenges exacerbated by tourism, two communes in Hoi An, Vietnam — Cam Thanh and Cham Islands (Tan Hiep Commune) — have become the faces of Zero Waste through the collaboration of stakeholders from the government, community organizations, farmers’ associations, businesses, and tourism associations.

La basura plástica está aumentando globalmente y según las tasas actuales de producción, se estima que el plástico aumentará al doble en los próximos veinte años. A la luz de la crisis global del plástico, tecnologías como transformar los residuos de plástico en combustible quemándolo, son promocionadas como circulares, buenas para el medio ambiente, y sostenibles, cuando en realidad se trata de todo lo contrario.