The Hindu

The Kerala tourism department's recent decision to shelve its incinerator project for kovalam and other tourism centres was greeted at the recent launch of WASTE NOT ASIA in Bangkok .  Delegates from as many as 12 asian countries, the US and the UK , who were present at the launch also agreed to extent their help to the Kerala Tourism department to implement the vision of a zero waste tourism site in the state.

Said Mr.  C Jayakumar of the eco group THANAL, "India is under siege from incinerator manufacturers and their ilk, including the international trade, aid and lending agencies.  Under these circumstances, the decision of the kerala tourism dept.  is encouraging".

WASTE NOT ASIA members have committed themselves to a "zero waste society" , in which discarded materials are composted, recycled or reused, rather than being incinerated or landfilled.  The alliance has singled out incineration as a particularly dangerous technology.  The delegates including activists from India, Nepal and Pakistan warned that incineration is a toxic technology being imposed on the third world by some of the most polluted nations in the world.  Japan and Europe had poisoned their own people with incinerators, and now they want to sell their burners in the rest of Asia, it was charged.

Incinerators have been identified throughout the industrialised world as the primary source of dioxins, considered as the most potent toxic chemical known to human kind.  Incinerators are also linked with heavy metals such as lead and mercury.  Said Mr.  Nityanand Jayaraman, toxic campaigner from Green Peace : "incinerators are coming to India disguised as pyrolators and waste to energy plants.  With the combined resources and energies of Waste Not Asia, we are confident that we will succeed in exposing incineration as waste management in the corporate interest, not public interest."

Waste Not Asia clarified that their alliance members would strive to put in place a sustainable "zero waste society" through a programme of clean production.  The alliance's work would be based on principles that emphasise material recovery over materials destruction.

The thrust would be on solutions that are democratically derived and socially just and systems that are community based.  The creation of local jobs, creation and involvement of small businesses would be the aim, as opposed to capital intensive corporate lead intervention.

The alliance members strongly criticised international lending agencies, particularly the USAID, ADB, the World Bank and the Japanese JICA, for their role in peddling expensive and hazardous incinerator technologies to the Third World.