Press release - January 15, 2001
The environmental group Greenpeace today challenged the Philippine government to rush the construction of composting and recycling plants instead of wasting resources in extremely unfavorable waste management dinosaurs like landfills and incinerators, stressing that the former together with public education is the only lasting solution to the current waste crisis facing Metro Manila.
The environmental group Greenpeace today challenged the
Philippine government to rush the construction of composting and
recycling plants instead of wasting resources in extremely
unfavorable waste management dinosaurs like landfills and
incinerators, stressing that the former together with public
education is the only lasting solution to the current waste crisis
facing Metro Manila.
"If the government can afford to fast-track the construction of
landfills and dumpsites, why not apply the same determination in
pursuit of the right solutions," according to Von Hernandez,
Greenpeace Campaign Director for Southeast Asia. The group also
branded proposals by certain government officials to revoke the
incineration ban in the Clean Air Act as unsound and ecologically
regressive.
"Repealing the incineration ban in the Clean Air Act is not the
solution to Metro Manila's garbage woes as some government
functionaries would like the public to believe. If communities are
fighting landfills and dumpsites, they have more reason to oppose
incinerators due to the toxic emissions associated even with
so-called high-temperature, state of the art waste burners, " said
Hernandez " This is literally jumping from the frying pan into the
fire," he added.
Waste incineration has been identified worldwide as the primary
source of heavy metal and dioxin emissions into the environment.
The ultra-toxic dioxin is a confirmed carcinogen and has been
linked to birth defects and a host of other health problems.
Communities living around and downwind of incinerators in countries
like France and Japan have also been documented to have higher
rates of cancer, birth defects and infant mortality rates compared
to incineration-free areas.
Incinerators do not make waste disappear -they simply transform
the problem into a chemical pollution menace which is costlier and
more difficult to contain. Incinerating garbage will not eliminate
landfills, since the toxic ash generated by the burning process
will still have to be dumped somewhere.
The group particularly singled out Department of Health (DOH)
Secretary Alberto Romualdez, stressing that "it is unthinkable if
not hypocritical for the country's highest health official to
promote cancer causing factories, instead of advocating genuine
solutions to the waste problem that would protect public health and
the environment. Perhaps Secretary Romualdez is just trying to
justify his Department's questionable decision to import
second-hand, pollutive incinerators from Austria before the Clean
Air Act was approved."
"As long as our officials remain obsessed with back-end
non-solutions and quick-fixes, we will never break free from the
waste crisis which has now become a periodic burden for our
citizens. The waste crisis has become symptomatic of the moral and
intellectual bankruptcy of this administration. The undemocratic
decision-making processes that have so far characterized the
selection of Semirara as a dumpsite and the re-opening of the San
Mateo landfill bear this out. The Filipino people deserve real
solutions and not illusions," added Hernandez.