Asia Pacific

Communities in the Philippines that were once riddled with trash are being recognized for their revolutionary zero waste models. By implementing a combination of effective policy advocacy, powerful grassroots organizing, and meaningful community education on ecological waste management, these communities decreased their waste in landfills, generated more jobs, and enhanced community safety. In this year’s celebration of the Zero Waste Month, these communities were the esteemed destinations of international delegates wanting to learn about innovative models.

Beginning with a presidential decree in 2014, Zero Waste Month is celebrated in the Philippines every January. This year, organizers invited foreign speakers to tour the barangays, or villages, of Potrero (Malabon City) and Fort Bonifacio (Taguig City) and the City of San Fernando (Pampanga)—communities that have successfully implemented innovative zero waste policies and models.

The policy adopted by these barangays was the RA 9003, a decentralization law that devolves solid waste management down to the barangay level. It mandates source segregation, segregated collection, and segregated destination of waste and the establishment of a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) in every barangay or cluster of barangays.

Implementing ecological solid waste management was no easy task, but the barangays partnered with Mother Earth Foundation (MEF) in implementing the law. With MEF training and guidance, barangays established MRFs and strictly enforced ‘no segregation, no collection’ policy. They tapped waste pickers to conduct door-to-door segregated collection from every household, and also encouraged residents to compost their biodegradable waste.

These strategies combined resulted in significant reduction of garbage ending in landfills or dumpsites. In the first year of implementation, for example, Barangay Potrero diverted 80% of its solid waste from landfills through composting and recycling, resulting in daily savings of Php15,000 from hauling and tipping fees.

The ecological management of solid waste also generated jobs for the waste workers. In Potrero, 65 jobs were generated, benefitting the informal waste workers who later became authorized garbage collectors or monitoring staff for the daily collection of waste. Fort Bonifacio was able to employ 23 residents as official community organizers, solid waste liaison officers, and barangay collectors. The barangay collectors, most of whom earned P50 per day as informal waste collectors before the project started, now earn a minimum monthly salary of P8,000 plus all the proceeds from the sale of recyclables divided among themselves.

Eco Store
The strict implementation of RA 9003 has turned this part of Potrero, Malabon City into a clean, green materials recovery facility complete with a colorful garden and eco store.

The project also enhanced community safety. The once unsightly streets of Potrero and Fort Bonifacio which were also sites for petty crimes, now house materials recovery facilities with mini-eco parks complete with gardens and an eco-store.

“These show that for ecological waste management, local governments do not need expensive, high-tech, and harmful waste disposal technologies that adversely affect public health and the environment, destroy much needed finite resources, cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and are unsustainable and end-of-pipe solutions,” shared Sonia Mendoza, chairman of Mother Earth Foundation.

Bannered by the theme, “On the Road to Zero Waste,” the eco-tour was organized by the Mother Earth Foundation (MEF) and the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA). 

This blog was written by Sherma Benosa, Communication Officer for GAIA Asia Pacific.  

Plastic waste constitutes between 60% and 80% of marine debris and is “one of the world’s most pervasive pollution problems impacting our oceans and waterways,” according to the U.N. Over the past 60 years, plastics production and waste have dramatically increased.

From raw material extraction through to plastic polluting the ocean, plastics represent the failure of a predominantly fossil fuel based, linear economic system. A problem this complex and embedded in our societies and economies requires solutions that address the cross-sector nature of the problem and are built upon sustainable, socially, and environmentally just frameworks that deliver permanent solutions and the deep changes we need.

GAIA is proud to be a founding member of the #BreakFreeFromPlastic movement which includes hundreds of organizations worldwide committed to a world free of plastic pollution. As a movement, we believe in holistic solutions that address the root cause of plastic pollution and work to reduce it first and foremost. We believe that all solutions should sustain the health of people and the planet and include community involvement and worker rights.

As a movement, we assert that as part of our pathway to world free of plastic pollution, no new incinerators should be constructed, and renewable energy incentives should be eliminated for plastics and waste burning. This includes gasification, pyrolysis, cement kilns, and other burn “waste-to-energy” facilities. These are false solutions that take us backward in our work for healthy oceans and people.

Check out GAIA staff member Anne Larracas’ words on the kinds of solutions we are building for plastic pollution —and the necessity of the global south as leaders in the solutions, and our factsheet on why incineration, gasification, pyrolysis, and plasma arc are NOT solutions for plastic pollution.

Plastic waste constitutes between 60% and 80% of marine debris and is “one of the world’s most pervasive pollution problems impacting our oceans and waterways,” according to the U.N.

Over the past 60 years, plastics production and waste have dramatically increased, part of a global waste crisis whose drivers have included rapid urbanization, increasing consumption in both high- and low-income countries, and increased production of “throw-away” products. Indeed, the vast majority of plastics are not recycled at the end of their useful life, ensuring that this multiplication in production results in multiplication of harmful waste. From raw material extraction through to plastic polluting the ocean, plastics represent the failure of a predominantly fossil fuel based, linear economic system.

A problem this complex and embedded in our societies and economies requires solutions that address the cross-sector nature of the problem and are built upon sustainable and environmentally just frameworks that deliver permanent solutions and the deep changes we need.

For those new to waste issues, incineration, gasification, pyrolysis, and plasma arc may appear appealing. But our network’s experiences in countries around the world have shown that these approaches are at best a distraction from real solutions, and at worst a source of serious climate and toxic pollution. As part of the Break Free From Plastics movement, we know that this isn’t just about managing the problem. It’s about preventing it in the first place.

Incineration — including gasification, pyrolysis, and plasma arc — is not a viable solution for plastic pollution, and is harmful.

  • Dangerous for marine life and human health. Burning plastic and other wastes releases dangerous substances such as heavy metals, Persistent Organic Pollutants, and other toxics into the air and ash waste residues. Experience looking at the few commercial-scale gasification, pyrolysis, and plasma arc facilities that have actually processed municipal solid wastes (as opposed to processing other materials) shows that these approaches can emit the same pollutants as mass-burn incinerators.  Such pollutants contribute to the development of asthma, cancer, endocrine disruption, and the global burden of disease. Persistent Organic Pollutants travel long distances, and ultimately deposit into the ocean and polar ice caps, where they can adsorb onto other plastic marine debris and microplastics, bioaccumulating up the food chain, threatening marine and human health.
  • New incinerator technologies are prone to failure and ineffective at eliminating plastic pollution.  Many companies claim to heat plastic to turn them into oil or energy using new incinerator technologies such as gasification, pyrolysis, and plasma arc. Yet despite their impressive claims, these technologies have failed repeatedly in country after country. They can also be exorbitantly expensive. In many coastal countries in Asia — where issues of poverty, open dumping, and a lack of waste management infrastructure and services contribute to the release of significant quantities of plastic waste into the oceans — it would cost between $5-53 billion per year to operate large-scale incinerators built to European standards of health and safety — which still allow the release the  release of dangerous plastic waste pollutants to air and into the ash residues.
  • Smaller scale and cheaper options raise many additional questions: what types of pollution filtration is provided? What happens to any filtered toxics? Are combustion sites monitored for emissions? If any fuel made from plastics is used off site, how is monitoring possible?
  • Bad for the climate and oceans. Plastic is a petroleum-based material, and when burned it’s like any other fossil fuel: it releases climate pollution. This in turn leads to rising sea levels, increased ocean and air toxicity, and destruction of coral reefs and other marine life. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, burning plastics is notably the worst possible end-of-life management approach for plastics from a climate perspective. Gasification, pyrolysis, and plasma incinerators are even less efficient at generating electricity than mass burn incinerators, and often supplement waste with coal and other fossil fuels in order to produce energy. Climate change is a major threat to our oceans and marine health.
  • Violate the principles of environmental justice. Incinerators cause environmental injustices in the communities where they are built, which carry the disproportionate burden of the air  pollution and toxic ash.  These places — often in the global south or communities of color in the global north — are also disproportionately impacted by the climate change that incinerators contribute to. People around the world are developing real solutions to our waste and climate crisis, based on the principles of zero waste and environmental justice. For more information, see our blog on the power of community-based solutions to plastic in the global south.

Plastic Pollution Solutions:
Zero Waste + Redesign

The most cost effective, reliable, and proven solutions for immediate marine plastic pollution are found in zero waste models that are being implemented in many cities around the world already. Community-based approaches of decentralized waste separation and collection, increased resource recovery, composting, recycling and waste reduction, have opened economic opportunities for millions of waste workers and are being sustained at costs that are a fraction of what it would take to build any incinerator.  Now is the time to support the expansion of sustainable zero waste practices to address plastic marine pollution and walk away from false solutions like plastic waste incineration, gasification, pyrolysis, and plasma arc.

Join Break Free From Plastics here!

Read our risk analysis for investors in gasification and pyrolysis

Read our analysis of proposed investment strategies for marine plastic pollution. 

Press Contact:

Mariel Vilella
Climate Campaigner Zero Waste Europe
Phone # 0044 07847079154
mariel@zerowasteeurope.eu

Pratibha Sharma
GAIA
Phone # +91 8411008973
pratibha@no-burn.org

Umesh Bahri
Scientist and Resident, Sukhdev Vihar Resident Welfare Association,
Delhi, India
Phone # +91 9811773129
bahriuc@rediffmail.com

What was touted by the UNFCCC as a clean and renewable energy project to manage Delhi’s waste has become a disturbing legacy of toxic pollution, displaced workers, and dishonest governance.

The Okhla “waste-to-energy” incinerator in Delhi has been accredited under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) under their “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM) program, created to support innovations that reduce carbon emissions. Yet the Okhla incinerator has been a disaster for those living near it, and residents have repeatedly sued over excessive emissions of dioxins and heavy metals. The matter was heard 27 times in the High Court before being shifted to the National Green Tribunal where there have been more than 50 hearings since and still counting. Two major hospitals in the area have also complained to the prime minister’s office about the hazards to patients[7].

“It is unfortunate that there is such blatant fraud on the UNFCCC’s carbon credit mechanism as well as on the conditions on which the environment clearance was granted by Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change in India” said Umesh C. Bahri, a resident of Sukhdev Vihar and a scientist familiar with accreditation processes. “Though the UNFCCC has been notified of the fraud, no action has been taken.”

In addition to concerns about toxic pollution, residents note that the incinerator is undermining one of Delhi’s best climate solutions— Delhi’s informal recyclers. The workers are responsible for significant annual emissions reductions [9]. If the waste to energy project burns even one-quarter of Delhi’s recyclables, it will effectively wipe out its own emissions savings, resulting in no net emissions reductions.

“Incinerating waste, which are actually recyclables, deprives us of our already meagre livelihoods,” say Zainab Bibi one of an army of waste pickers engaged in collecting and recycling plastic waste in the Okhla area. “There is no alternate employment available to us.”

But because the CDM has not calculated the project’s impact on recycling, it will continue to award the company hundreds of thousands of spurious carbon credits – credits which do not represent real emissions reductions.

“Climate action is about justice and sustainability, not about poisoning people and snatching away livelihoods,” said Bharati Chaturved the director of a wastepicker rights group Chintan, Delhi, “But this is what the Okhla waste-to-energy plant has done-displace nearly 300 waste pickers, and consequently, 63% of their children out of school. For this, it has received carbon credits. Is this how the world will fight climate change? By funding poverty creation? The new climate finance regime must put decent, sustainable livelihoods and the poor at its centre.”

The plant blatantly violates other state regulations for polluting industries, being barely 150 meters from long-established residential areas, posing unacceptable health risks[6] to neighbouring residents.Despite such a long tainted record for this incinerator plant, the UNFCCC has issued a total of 438,793 Certified Emission Reduction credits (CERs) in the past five years and will continue to provide CERs under the CDM until 2021.

Many organizations across the country and world are calling on the UNFCC to stop funding incinerator projects like the one in Okhla, which have repeatedly proven to be sources of both toxic and climate pollution.[7] Their demands include an immediate investigation of the incinerator to ensure compliance with the current CDM modalities and procedures, compensation from the UNFCCC for the harm this project has caused residents, and a commitment to ensure that climate finance is devoted to truly sustainable, low-carbon, and toxic free projects in India and globally.

A few years ago, more than a 100 container vans of mixed waste that were falsely declared as plastics intended for recycling were illegally exported from Canada to the Philippines. GAIA and our members have fought hard against this, and last week, a regional trial court in the city of Manila handed the decision to return the waste to Canada. There is still a long fight ahead to make sure that this court decision will be implemented, but for now, we’d like to celebrate this great news with all of you!

A big THANK YOU from the Philippines and all of us to those who supported this campaign, especially GAIA members and allies in Canada.

Read the full article

Destiny Watford is one of six activists honored today with the Goldman Environmental Prize at a ceremony in the San Francisco Opera House.

“In a community whose environmental rights had long been sidelined to make room for heavy industry, Destiny inspired residents of Curtis Bay, Baltimore to defeat plans to build the nation’s largest incinerator less than a mile away from her high school,” stated the prize announcement.

Read the full story on our blog.

Read United Workers’ story and Take Action here.

Read our press release. 

Destiny achieved this with many others in her student group Free Your Voice, the human rights Committee of United Workers.

“I am proud to serve as a representative of Free Your Voice, my city, and state as we continue to build a movement to change our city and nation towards environmental justice, truly green living-wage jobs, and affordable housing, to ensure that our basic human rights to live in a healthy, sustainable community are met.” said Destiny.

During their campaign, Destiny and her fellow organizers at Free Your Voice connected with many organizations including GAIA and learned about incinerators being shut down all across the country, the violations these facilities committed, and the climate policies that keep the remaining ones alive.

Climate policies like the Clean Power Plan in the U.S. (and other policies around the world) have wrongly classified the burning of organic waste (stuff from plants) to be renewable energy. This rebranding of trash burning as a “climate solution” keeps polluting facilities alive through climate subsidies all over the country. For example, state climate subsidies are a lifeline to the costly Detroit, Michigan incinerator, which has faced years of grassroots resistance

Having defeated the proposed incinerator, Free Your Voice has  developed an alternate plan for Fair Development, rooted in the principles of human rights and environmental justice. Their first step is to get the 90 acres of land being held by a trash burning incinerator company in order to make way for a community owned solar farm.

Take action to support Destiny and communities around the world fighting for justice!

El rapido crecimiento de Mumbai, su alta densidad y gran tamaño presentan desafios significativos a su sistema de gestion de los residuos. La enorme cantidad de residuos que se genera en la ciudad hace tentadora la utilizacion de “soluciones” tecnologicas a gran escala. Sin embargo, el enfoque opuesto, una gestion de los residuos altamente descentralizada e impulsada por un modelo cimentado en las personas, ha demostrado tener exito.

Mumbai – PDF

Statement of GAIA participating organisations agreed in Paris on the occasion of the twenty first Conference of Parties (COP21) on the 5th December 2015.

The participating organisations of GAIA stand in solidarity with Paris frontline communities carrying the pollution burdens and health impacts associated with waste incinerators. The Ivry incinerator reconstruction project represents a step in the wrong direction for action on climate change, much needed jobs, clean air and health for the people of Paris.

As participating organisations of GAIA we declare our firm resolve and expanded commitment to work towards a safe climate future through zero waste solutions.

We welcome the global consensus that carbon based pollution is driving dangerous climate change that cannot be ignored. The existential threat that climate change represents is an opportunity for globa peace, security and unity.

We call for an end to climate finance for incineration. We stress that waste disposal practices such as incineration contributes more GHG’s and toxic air pollutants per unit of energy than the coal and gas energy sector.

We highlight the negative health impacts that incinerators impose on host communities and the environmental injustice this represents. Children are particularly vulnerable to the toxic air pollutants emitted by incinerators. These pollutants, including persistent organic pollutants (POPs) like dioxins (PCD and PCDF) adversely affect health at minute levels.

We urge all governments to remove the loopholes and gaps in GHG accounting methods and suspend allrenewable energy credits, benefits and subsidies for the waste disposal sector. In particular, so-called “waste to energy” incinerators and landfills, which entrench a linear economic model. We need a rapid transition towards a sustainable circular economy ensuring the protection of our earth’s finite resources for future generations.

We urge all governments to remove the eligibility criteria for biomass burning in all renewable energ credits, benefits and subsidies. Investment in composting practices for biomass waste delivers greater climate mitigation and ecological benefits through soil carbon sequestration, soil nutrients and is less expensive and polluting than biomass incineration. Composting biomass waste is a proven climate change solution.

We call for investment in zero waste solutions to address impending climate threats. Zero waste solutions provide the deep transformative changes needed globally to create grassroots, sustainable, circular economies and social justice. Zero waste solutions support and empower wastepickers, composters and the informal recycling sector which provides valuable waste management services that mitigate climate change, Zero waste solutions allow us to safely manage and reduce our waste and pollution impacts, protect our environment and health, create jobs, uphold intergenerational equity and provide creative ways to minimise the consumption of earth’s finite resources.

City of Manila. “Malinis na hangin, ipaglaban natin! Basura huwag sunugin!” (Defend clean air! Burn not trash!)

Eco-activist groups comprising of the EcoWaste Coalition, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), Green Convergence, Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), KULAY, Philippine Movement for Climate Justice (PMCJ), and green advocates from local communities drummed up the call in time for the commemoration of the Earth Day to protest renewed moves from some lawmakers to lift the incineration ban.

Carrying a mock incinerator monster surrounded by youth activists dressed as zombies, to symbolically depict the horror of incineration for drastically devastating clean air, climate, public health, as well as jobs and livelihoods, the 200 strong cavalcade marched from Espana Road to the Malacanang Palace to deliver a strong Earth Day message to the president.

“In response to renewed attempts by some pro-incineration congressmen to water down the Clean Air Act, we call on President Benigno Simeon Aquino, III to defend the law from legislative attacks and keep the incineration ban intact!,” cried Aileen Lucero, National Coordinator of the waste and pollution watchdog EcoWaste Coaltion.

Members of different environmental groups and community representatives celebrate Earth Day through a protest raising concern on the proposed bill lifting the ban on waste incineration at the Mendiola Peace Arch in Manila, Tuesday. The groups urged President Aquino to defend the Philippine Clean Air Act and protect public health. (Photo by Gigie Cruz/ GAIA)

“P-Noy should make it his legacy to defend the Clean Air Act from attempts to lift the ban on the burn and to uphold it through genuine implementation,” she added.

Despite failure to reach consensus during 3 consultation meetings of the Committee on Ecology of the Philippine Congress on Cong. Edgar Erice’s proposed bill amending Section 20 of the Clean Air Act or Republic Act 8749 to allow incineration of wastes, the committee’s technical working group on incineration surprisingly came up recently with a draft.

“We are aghast that, despite oppositions from the civil society and in the face of hard evidences against the supposed benefits of incineration, a.k.a. ‘thermal treatment technology’, pro-incinerators in the House of Representatives were too excited to amend RA 8749 that they appeared willing to proceed with it even behind our backs,” said Paeng Lopez of GAIA.

According to the group, the pro-incinerators’ claim that incineration solves our problems with wastes, energy, climate change, and even health issues, have been debunked repeatedly.

“Incineration is unsustainable as it perpetuates wasting by destroying resources, instead of recovering them for ecological management through recycling, composting, or reusing,” Lucero stressed, adding that this is in express violation of the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act or RA 9003.

As pertains energy, Lopez emphasized that a lot more energy is saved from recycling compared to what incineration is capable of generating. “Recycling a ton of PET bottles for example will save 85.16 Gigajoules of energy: that is 26.4 times the energy that can be generated from incinerating the same input,” he explained, quoting from American zero waste and incineration expert Dr. Paul Connett.

“Incineration will also not do justice to climate as more carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, is produced by waste-to-energy incinerators than coal-fired power plants,” Lopez added.

For her part, Merci Ferrer, HCWH-Asia Director, underscored the health impacts of incinerating medical wastes, particularly to host communities. “Burning of biomedical wastes produces dioxins and furans which when released to the environment will cause enormous public health impacts such as impairment of the immune, nervous, endocrine and reproductive systems,” she said.

“Incineration is unsustainable; it wastes valuable resources and energy; it promotes global warming; and produces toxic ash and air emissions,” summed the group.

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