Citizens from various countries around the world will be mobilizing on September 30 to raise awareness of the massive increase in energy consumption that waste incineration generates, mainly in urban centers, and to remind people that recycling saves more energy than that produced by this obsolete technology.
The actions focus mainly on showing that preventing waste generation and recycling are essential strategies for saving energy.
The Zero Waste goal offers authorities a roadmap to move towards green economic development that creates jobs, protects the environment and improves public health. Zero Waste eliminates the impacts generated by high volumes and levels of toxicity of waste, through waste prevention, recycling and composting programs.
Recycling saves more energy than incineration can produce. For example, in the United States, it prevents the use of nearly 12 billion gallons of gasoline each year.
According to Acción Ecológica, the environmental policies of governments have been characterized by hiding garbage under the rug or using water as a conveyor belt for waste. Not seeing, not feeling, not smelling garbage near cities -according to an activist of the group- is the motto to apply the strategy of sending it to rural areas. For this reason and coinciding with this date they will present: The Cartography of Garbage in Ecuador, which is a series of maps that show the criteria under which the final disposal of waste is defined: open-air dumps, incinerators and sanitary landfills.
Incinerators also emit greenhouse gases, especially from burning plastics. By contrast, recycling paper, for example, means that more trees continue to live in forests and continue to capture carbon from the atmosphere. This reduces climate change.
Incineration creates a negative spiral of increasing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Policies and contracts that commonly govern incinerators require that a certain amount of waste be generated. These contracts impose fees that remove any incentive for governments to improve waste prevention strategies and recycling and composting programs.
For more information on incineration and zero waste please visit www.noalaincineracion.org
(Sources: US EPA, “Waste Management and Energy Savings: Benefits by the Numbers,” 2005,www.epa.gov/mswclimate; GAIA site, www.no-burn.org.)
ES_ES 
EN