Global protest against waste incineration

international | environment | news report Tuesday July 22, 2003 02:52 by no-burn

Biggest day of action ever against incineration

A major protest against waste incineration was staged this week, involving over 235 groups from 62 countries. The protest was timed to coincide with the first day of the Seventh Intergovernmental Committee meeting on persistent organic pollutants (POPS), and the release of a new report recommending the phasing out of waste incineration.

The report, ‘Waste Incineration: a dying technology’, released by the group Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), claims that incineration is an unreliable waste treatment technology which produces secondary waste streams more dangerous than the original.

It says incineration is also inefficient in terms of energy production and creates very few jobs.

Ann Leonard, Co-coordinator of GAIA, who organised the protest, said that people are concerned with efforts in the US Senate to classify incineration as renewable energy.

“Incinerator pushers are scrambling to repackage and reinvent their technologies using various forms of greenwashing including referring to incinerators as clean, renewable energy sources, or claiming to have new variations for the same old and discredited process,” she said.

Public opposition has contributed to the closure of incineration facilities worldwide. Jurisdictions in 15 countries have partial bans on incineration and the Philippines have banned it all together.

The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants identifies all waste incinerators, including cement kilns burning hazardous waste, as major sources of dioxins, furans and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and recommends the use of substitute techniques to avoid this pollution.

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) also reports that incinerators account for 69% of dioxin emissions worldwide.