Global Alliance For Incinerator Alternatives

Global Projects, Plastics & Climate: In collaboration with allies including BAN and IPEN, GAIA successfully prevented the Basel Convention from adopting chemical recycling as environmentally sound waste management in its updated technical guidelines on plastic waste. This remains an ongoing battle requiring sustained dedication. Notably, the Basel Convention's final guidelines on plastic waste still feature bracketed sections referencing chemical recycling, signaling widespread controversy and minimal consensus. In the context of negotiations for the global plastics treaty, GAIA brought 23 people to INC-2, almost all from the Global South, and provided logistical support for a larger group including other GAIA and BFFP members. This was the bulk of civil society representation from the Global South. For INC-3, GAIA coordinated a civil society delegation of 42 members and staff (30+ from the Global South), including two representatives of the Association of Indian Waste Pickers, directly financially supporting 30+ participants. Our wider coordination of delegates multiplied the impact of the group and strengthened capacity and alignment. GAIA played a key role facilitating the just transition dialogues around the plastic treaty, with an emphasis on the bridging of waste pickers and Indigenous peoples perspectives to support a common vision. Particularly in the context of the methane moment, GAIA has shifted the narrative helping zero waste practices become an acknowledged, valid, and economic way to advance the global climate movement that promotes both human and community rights. GAIA built network consensus around principles and framing for its growing portfolio of methane work, consulting community advocates and zero waste practitioners from 99 member organizations across 41 countries to develop its principles for fast action on waste and methane. These principles were released in December 2023 during COP28 along with grassroots stories showing these values in action. They set a high bar for justice considerations in the rapidly expanding work to tackle methane that dominated COP28 discussions. GAIA research continues to prove vital to ensuring climate and clean energy solutions are rooted in community needs. In 2023, GAIAs early research on EV batteries helped identify opportunities for upstream intervention to mitigate waste impacts of the shift to clean energy. By breaking down technical issues in this emerging field, GAIA empowered organizers with a zero waste hierarchy framing driving action on battery design, repair requirements, and reuse applications to extend longevity.GAIAs demonstrated success in empowering its members to create replicable and scalable models of zero wastewith more than 550 cities having made commitments toward zero wasteand the ability to amplify these models throughout GAIAs international network supported positive change. For example, our member Yaksa Pelestari Bumi Berkelanjutan (YPBB) and other groups in Indonesia helped to convince the West Java provincial government to officially prohibit the disposal of organic waste in the Sarimukti landfill effective January 1, 2024. The policy has the potential to divert 228,855 tons of organic waste per year from Bandung alonepreventing 575,428 tonnes CO2eq of methane emissions per year from the landfill.

Break Free From Plastic Global: BFFP, a fiscally-sponsored project of GAIA, is a global movement envisioning a future free from plastic pollution. Launched in September 2016, the movement now comprises more than 2,500 organizations across the world and thousands of individual supporters demanding massive reductions in single-use plastics and pushing for lasting solutions to the plastic pollution crisis.In November 2023, BFFP and GAIA together published Smoke & Mirrors, a report revealing the realities behind plastic credits and offsetting. In the context of global plastics treaty negotiations, BFFP released a guidelines for a world free from plastic pollution. BFFP Asia/Pacific continued initiatives against plastic sachet packaging. Its sixth annual plastic regional brand audit organized 807 volunteers to conduct brand audits in 50 locations across India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, collecting 33,467 sachets, which were traced to 2,678 different brands. BFFP Latin America & Caribbean members worked on issues including re-use, waste trade, plastic burning, and extended producer responsibility. They coordinated around regional work on the global plastics treaty, and began participating in a project to map false solutions to climate change across Latin America. The first regional Zero Waste Academy was developed and held in Ecuador in October 2023. BFFP Africa set up an African Plastics Policy working group with 20 members from the region to coordinate strategy and consolidate global plastics treaty work and also undertook a powerful webinar series. Following a spill of bags of nurdles (plastic pellets) affecting the northern coast of Spain, BFFP Europe members also called on the European Parliament to adopt an ambitious revision of legislation to prevent pellet loss.