Global Day of Action against Waste Incineration
Date: 17 June
June 17th, 2002 is the first day of the 6th international meeting on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and the recent Stockholm Convention on POPs.
A Global Day of Action is being observed all over the world by communities, groups and individuals as part of a global alliance—GAIA—Global Alliance for Incineration Alternatives, who are working towards promoting community waste management practices and alternative to high cost burn technologies like incineration.
We work towards raising public awareness about dangers of toxics in the environment, cleaner and safer alternatives, community participation in managing waste and related policy changes.
Incinerators have been identified as primary sources of POPs such as dioxins and furans.
Incineration emissions and ash residues have been implicated in the serious contamination of the environment, the food supply and even breast milk, and have been associated with a growing litany of health problems including various cancers, reproductive disorders, immune system dysfunction, and birth defects.
Moreover, incinerators destroy vast quantities of resources which could have been recycled and brought back into the productive economy, and represents a massive financial drain on local governments and communities who will end up paying for the operation and maintenance of expensive, imported technology ·
Cape Town has nine medical incinerators, which release mercury and other heavy metals into the atmosphere, as well as dioxins and furans into the atmosphere. Environmentalists and affected communities are still in contention with the authorities over an application to erect a Hazardous Waste incinerator to burn wastes from the Swartklip (Pty) Ltd armaments factory owned by Denel – an incinerator which would be within 500 meters of shack dwellers in Khayalitsha.
Further afield in our country, there is an application to erect a hazardous waste incinerator at Sasolburg. Whilst the local community, the local authorities and a host of environmental organisations have come out strongly in protest against this development, it would seem that the Free State Provincial authorities tend to look kindly upon this development.
There is also an EIA process going on for Hazardous waste incinerators in Gauteng. Alternative methods for dealing with hazardous wastes have been developed.
A newly released report—Learning Not To Burn—A Primer For Citizens on Alternatives to Burning Hazardous Waste has just appeared This 30+ page report includes profiles of alternative treatment technologies to a listing of technical reports about alternatives, Learning Not to Burn seeks to fill the gap in the grassroots environmental justice movement regarding safer destruction technologies.
Copies of the report may be obtained from Mike Schade from Citizens’ Environmental Coalition at (716) 885-6848 or mike@cectoxic.org. It is important that everyone, from our politicians to our citizens should be apprised of the deadly impact of the incinerator industry and their polluting technology!
We urge authorities and citizens to shift to clean production, zero waste and sustainable waste management systems. The Global Anti-Incineration Alliance (GAIA) is coordinating actions around the world that will raise awareness about the hazards of incineration.
