GAIA Statement | Global Week of Action to Stop Incineration | October 2026
As communities across the world mobilize against waste incineration, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) is raising the alarm about the waste-burning industry’s presence at COP31, the UN Climate Change Conference taking place in Antalya, Türkiye, this November.
At a time when the COP31 Presidency has made zero waste a priority, representatives of the incineration industry are expected to participate in discussions on circular cities, waste management, and climate finance.
These include CEWEP, the European waste-to-energy industry’s lobbying association, which actively promotes incineration as a climate and energy solution, and Kanadevia Inova, a major waste-to-energy technology provider, both listed in the COP31 official side events agenda. CEWEP has previously promoted incineration at UN climate conferences, including COP30. Meanwhile, Kanadevia Inova’s involvement in the proposed Smokey Mountain incineration project in Manila, alongside its local partner Philippine Ecology Systems Corp. (PhilEco), has raised serious concerns among human rights advocates, environmental organizations, and local residents, as documented in GAIA’s report, The Smokey Mountain Waste-to-Energy Project: Arrested Development and Environmental Justice in Urban Manila.
There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of this participation: an industry whose business depends on burning waste is seeking to influence discussions about waste prevention, climate action, and the transition towards sustainable waste systems.
The global zero waste agenda must not become an opportunity to greenwash incineration, legitimize polluting infrastructure, or redirect climate finance away from real solutions that protect communities, support a just transition for waste workers, and deliver meaningful climate benefits.
Burning waste fuels the climate crisis
Waste-to-energy is often marketed as clean or renewable energy. But burning waste does not make its carbon emissions disappear.
Waste-to-energy incineration produces approximately 1.7 times as much greenhouse gas pollution per unit of electricity as coal-fired power plants. Plastics, which are made primarily from fossil fuels, contribute significantly to these emissions.
Incineration also destroys materials that could otherwise be reused, recycled, or composted, creating additional emissions through the extraction and manufacture of replacement products.
Far from advancing a circular economy, incineration perpetuates a linear model of extraction, consumption and destruction.
An expensive industry that locks cities into burning waste
Incinerators are among the most capital-intensive waste management facilities. Their financial models frequently depend on long-term contracts, public subsidies, and guaranteed volumes of waste.
These arrangements can lock municipalities into decades of waste burning, even as they seek to reduce waste generation, expand recycling and introduce separate collection of organic waste.
The financial consequences are particularly serious for cities in the Global South, where scarce public resources are urgently needed for basic waste services, community infrastructure, and climate adaptation.
Meanwhile, Europe is already struggling with overcapacity. According to Zero Waste Europe’s latest update of its Enough is Enough report, existing incineration infrastructure has the capacity to burn almost 65 million tonnes more waste annually than it currently processes.
Yet incineration companies continue promoting and exporting the same infrastructure model internationally.
Why should countries facing urgent development and climate challenges invest in infrastructure that other regions have already built in excess?
Communities pay the price
Behind the industry’s promises of clean energy and modern infrastructure are communities facing pollution, financial burdens, and threats to their livelihoods.
GAIA’s Burn Book: Incinerators that Threaten the Climate, Public Health, and our Finances highlights how these concerns recur across countries and regions.
In Delhi, India, communities around the Timarpur-Okhla waste-to-energy plant have raised concerns about air pollution and the facility’s proximity to residential neighbourhoods.
In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Reppie waste-to-energy facility illustrates the risks of prioritizing large, centralized waste-burning infrastructure in cities where recycling, organic waste recovery, and inclusive waste services require investment.
In Surabaya, Indonesia, community-led air quality monitoring near waste-burning operations has documented serious pollution concerns. GAIA’s Clearing the Air research, covering sites in Indonesia, Nigeria, and the Philippines, recorded fine particulate matter levels five to eight times higher than World Health Organization guidelines.
And in Manila, Philippines, the proposed Smokey Mountain waste-to-energy project offers a stark warning about the environmental justice implications of incineration expansion.
The proposed ₱26 billion, 100 MW project, designed to process approximately 3,000 tonnes of waste per day, threatens to transform an area with a long history of environmental injustice into a new site of industrial waste burning.
GAIA’s investigation into the Smokey Mountain project documents concerns over displacement, inadequate community consultation, environmental risks, and threats to waste-picker livelihoods. Kanadevia Inova has been identified as a technology partner in the project.
These examples expose a wider pattern: communities already bearing the burden of waste pollution are being asked to accept new infrastructure that may deepen existing inequalities, while the companies promoting these projects present themselves as providers of climate solutions.
Incineration also threatens the livelihoods of waste pickers, who play a vital role in recovering materials and sustaining local recycling economies. By burning valuable recyclables, incinerators can displace workers and undermine existing recovery systems. A just transition must recognize their contributions, protect their rights and livelihoods, and strengthen their role in building inclusive zero waste systems.
Climate finance must not subsidize false solutions
At COP31, the participation of CEWEP in an event addressing the Global Zero Waste and Methane Fund raises particularly serious concerns.
Methane reduction in the waste sector is urgently needed. But replacing methane emissions from organic waste with fossil carbon emissions from burning plastics is not a credible pathway to a zero waste future.
Climate finance should support prevention, separate collection, composting, anaerobic digestion where appropriate, recycling, and the inclusion of waste pickers.
It should not be used to finance infrastructure that burns recoverable materials, creates long-term financial liabilities, and competes with the very systems needed to achieve zero waste.
The presence of industry representatives in climate policy discussions also raises important questions about conflicts of interest, transparency, and whose expertise is prioritized.
The companies and associations that stand to profit from expanding incineration should not be given privileged influence over the policies and financing mechanisms intended to accelerate the transition away from polluting waste management.
Real solutions are already here
Around the world, GAIA members are working with municipalities, waste pickers, and communities to demonstrate practical alternatives to incineration.
More than 550 municipalities worldwide are taking steps towards zero waste, demonstrating that preventing waste, recovering materials, managing organics, and protecting livelihoods can form the foundation of effective local climate action.
These approaches reduce methane emissions, prevent pollution, conserve resources, and support a just transition by recognizing waste pickers, improving working conditions, and creating opportunities for decent livelihoods.
They are the solutions that deserve international recognition, technical support, and climate finance.
GAIA calls on the COP31 Presidency and climate finance institutions to:
- Keep the incineration industry out of climate policymaking. Establish safeguards against conflicts of interest and prevent companies with vested interests in waste burning from shaping the zero waste agenda.
- Reject incineration as a zero waste or climate solution. Ensure that COP31 commitments prioritize waste prevention, reuse, separate collection, recycling, and organic waste management.
- Exclude incineration from climate finance. Establish explicit safeguards preventing the Global Zero Waste and Methane Fund and other climate finance mechanisms from supporting waste burning, including refuse-derived fuels and co-incineration.
- Put communities, waste pickers and a just transition at the center. Guarantee meaningful participation, protect workers’ rights and livelihoods, and invest in inclusive zero waste systems that improve working conditions, provide social protection, and strengthen local economies.
- Invest in proven, community-led solutions. Direct international climate finance towards zero waste systems that reduce emissions, improve public health, create dignified livelihoods, and support local governments, waste picker organizations, and communities.
As the Global Week of Action to Stop Incineration brings together communities resisting waste burning across the world, their message to COP31 is clear:
The climate crisis cannot be solved by burning more waste.
Climate finance must not fuel incineration. Climate policy must not be shaped by the industries that profit from it. And a just transition must not leave behind the workers and communities who are already building the solutions we need.
Incinerators Out of COP31. Zero Waste In.
