Bankrolling Polluting Technology:
The World Bank and Incineration

September 2002

SUMMARY

World Bank Group Promotes Polluting Technology
Incineration is a dangerous, costly, and unsustainable method of treating waste. Despite the known health hazards and extreme economic burdens of incineration, the World Bank Group (WBG) continues to promote this polluting technology. At least 156 projects in 68 countries since 1993 and 26 projects since 2001 have included incineration, according to documents on WBG websites.

In its roles as lender and policy advisor, the World Bank Group promotes incineration for industrial wastes, healthcare wastes, and municipal wastes (including wastes from tourism projects). Incinerators waste resources and create hazardous releases. Incineration of several of the waste streams in World Bank Group projects since 2001 is particularly hazardous, such as pesticide residues and organochlorine compounds. Incineration of these wastes would result in even higher quantities of extremely dangerous pollutants. Among the organochlorines proposed to be burned are PVC byproducts and PCBs.

Economic and health concerns have forced a reexamination of incineration's viability around the world. Incinerators have come under attack in countries that are large-scale lenders to the World Bank Group, such as the United States and Japan, and countries that are large-scale borrowers, such as India. The Philippines passed a national ban on incineration in 1999.

The 2001 U.N. Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) is a global treaty that obligates participating nations to minimize certain POPs, including dioxins and furans, and identifies incineration as a major source of dioxins and furans. To be consistent with its stated goals of "sustainable development" and public commitment to reducing and eliminating the release of POPs from developing countries, the WBG should conform to the Stockholm Convention by immediately stopping the funding of projects that include incineration.

The Problems of Incineration: Incinerators Produce Hazardous Releases
Incinerators release toxic pollutants in the form of stack gases, solid residues and sometimes liquid effluent. Hazardous pollutants from incineration include Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) such as dioxins and furans, as well as heavy metals, acid gases, particulates and greenhouse gases. POPs are especially dangerous because they bioaccumulate, biomagnify, resist decomposition and are capable of being transported great distances, thus threatening human populations and ecosystems around the world.

Technology to mitigate the air pollution from incinerators is extremely expensive and rarely utilized in less-industrialized nations. Additionally, such technology collects pollutants including dioxins and concentrates them in the ash, which changes the form but does not solve the problem of hazardous emissions. No matter the air pollution control technology, hazardous ash remains a threat. In fact, the better the air pollution control technology, the more hazardous the ash.

Increasing pollution in regions already suffering from widespread health problems due to byproducts of combustion such as particulates, POPs and mercury is especially unsustainable and threatening to public health.

Alternatives to Incineration Exist
Viable alternatives to incineration exist for healthcare wastes, municipal wastes, and industrial and hazardous wastes. Healthcare waste is primarily composed of non-infectious waste that is similar to general municipal waste. Maintaining separate waste streams for potentially infectious and non-infectious wastes is inexpensive and cost-effective because it reduces the total amount of potentially infectious waste that needs treatment. Non-combustion alternatives exist for treating potentially infectious medical waste.

Programs for waste reduction and the separation of discards into categories such as reusables, recyclables and compostables, are financially and environmentally better strategies than incineration for dealing with municipal waste. The best approach for industrial wastes is prevention: reducing or eliminating hazardous industrial inputs and waste-intensive products as well as minimizing the quantity and toxicity of remaining wastes. For hazardous waste that already exists, non-burn treatments have been developed that are less dangerous than incineration.

Additional Problems of Incineration in Southern Countries
In Southern countries, economic and environmental problems of incinerators are further magnified. Among the reasons for this exacerbation are inadequate legislative and regulatory infrastructures, a lack of facilities to adequately monitor and test emissions and residues, less transparency and fewer opportunities for public participation, different waste content (municipal waste in less-industrialized countries consists of more organic and inert matter), and greater budget uncertainties which adversely affect maintenance of facilities.

World Bank Group Continues to Promote Incineration
Despite the overwhelming problems with incineration, the World Bank Group continues to fund incinerators and to promote incineration in its publications. Some World Bank Group projects do recognize concerns about incineration or promote alternative methods of treatment and waste management. But the Bank's publications and advice to Southern countries continue to endorse waste incineration and largely fail to address current research on its environmental and economic problems. Public interest organizations from World Bank Group borrowing and lending countries have attempted to engage the World Bank Group about these issues, but have received little constructive response. The World Bank Group has not developed any official mechanism for monitoring or restricting its funding of incinerators.