Despite all the evidence linking the burning of medical waste to acute toxic contamination, and although it is easy to find information on alternative techniques for finding medical waste, the World Bank continues to include incineration of medical waste in its health sector projects.
The World Bank can not invoke ignorance in its ongoing defense of the marketing of incineration. In January 1996, the World Bank office in South Asia published a report entitled "India's Environment: Assessing Projects, Programs and Priorities" in which it recommended avoiding the burning of medical waste:
"Long-term policies, guidelines and legislation should link the immediate needs of the sorting and treatment of medical waste from the source, and should include appropriate technologies to ensure sustainable protection of the environment and public health rather than the adoption of expensive, costly and difficult imported modern incinerators."
The incinerators were described as a landfill in the sky. The ash generated by alternative solid waste incinerators, considered "hazardous waste" by the Supreme Court of the United States of America, pollutes soil and groundwater.
Incinerators, a treatment for an end-to-end problem, are inherently problematic. The source-based treatment strategy eliminates innumerable innumerable problems by adopting end-of-pipe solutions by reducing, reusing and recycling used materials, applying combustion techniques, Recycling. In the case of the use of naturally decomposing materials, we have a proper landfill.
It is important to note a positive and practical situation where a successful experiment was implemented in the Spanish island of Majorca. A comprehensive plan based on public awareness campaigns, financial and technical incentives, voluntary screening, reuse agreements with the industrialists and a legal strengthening of product liability has been developed, allowing for the adoption of a waste management program based on an example of a fully incinerated island.
Burning is not a solution to the problem of waste because it is a simple transfer of contaminants from the waste itself into the emissions of ashes and ash. Burning also eliminates the possibility of taking advantage of the value of materials through recycling.
The alternative techniques presented in the study, which are listed in Appendix B, are a list of the names of the shopping companies that are environmentally and economically viable alternatives that are superior to the incinerators. Steam sterilization is present in large numbers in many hospitals and many contaminated equipment can be treated for reuse.
Greenpeace welcomes the efforts of the CDR and the Ministries of Environment and Health to seek a comprehensive solution to manage the problem of hospital waste, but it calls on them and hospital owners to choose alternatives to incinerators rather than being dragged blindly by the mistakes of the West.
The World Bank can not invoke ignorance in its ongoing defense of the marketing of incineration. In January 1996, the World Bank office in South Asia published a report entitled "India's Environment: Assessing Projects, Programs and Priorities" in which it recommended avoiding the burning of medical waste:
"Long-term policies, guidelines and legislation should link the immediate needs of the sorting and treatment of medical waste from the source, and should include appropriate technologies to ensure sustainable protection of the environment and public health rather than the adoption of expensive, costly and difficult imported modern incinerators."
The incinerators were described as a landfill in the sky. The ash generated by alternative solid waste incinerators, considered "hazardous waste" by the Supreme Court of the United States of America, pollutes soil and groundwater.
Incinerators, a treatment for an end-to-end problem, are inherently problematic. The source-based treatment strategy eliminates innumerable innumerable problems by adopting end-of-pipe solutions by reducing, reusing and recycling used materials, applying combustion techniques, Recycling. In the case of the use of naturally decomposing materials, we have a proper landfill.
It is important to note a positive and practical situation where a successful experiment was implemented in the Spanish island of Majorca. A comprehensive plan based on public awareness campaigns, financial and technical incentives, voluntary screening, reuse agreements with the industrialists and a legal strengthening of product liability has been developed, allowing for the adoption of a waste management program based on an example of a fully incinerated island.
Burning is not a solution to the problem of waste because it is a simple transfer of contaminants from the waste itself into the emissions of ashes and ash. Burning also eliminates the possibility of taking advantage of the value of materials through recycling.
The alternative techniques presented in the study, which are listed in Appendix B, are a list of the names of the shopping companies that are environmentally and economically viable alternatives that are superior to the incinerators. Steam sterilization is present in large numbers in many hospitals and many contaminated equipment can be treated for reuse.
Greenpeace welcomes the efforts of the CDR and the Ministries of Environment and Health to seek a comprehensive solution to manage the problem of hospital waste, but it calls on them and hospital owners to choose alternatives to incinerators rather than being dragged blindly by the mistakes of the West.