Global Alliance For Incinerator Alternatives

Programs: Zw cities & plastics solutions: last years burgeoning movement to reduce plastic pollution in the ocean has since transformed into a wide-reaching, multi-layered strategic initiative taking place across borders and sectors. In the past year, over a dozen cities in the philippines, indonesia, india, and elsewhere have launched new zero waste initiatives that include organizing educational study tours of zero waste programs, putting educational festivals about zero waste, hosting international conferences and/or national meetings about zero waste, and establishing entirely new zero waste programs where none have existed before. For example, we attended a national meeting on plastics in china, organized by the china zero waste alliance, reei, ecocanton and the wuhu ecology center, and shared with them the planning templates for the highly successful zero waste festival held in the philippines so they could host their own version of the event. To expand plastic pollution reduction efforts throughout the region, gaia supported deepening work on local solutions to plastic pollution in indonesia and performed outreach in vietnam, malaysia, and cambodia, some of which will culminate in a national meeting in vietnam on zero waste later in 2017. Through outreach like this, we have secured buy-in from government officials, ngos and civil society, practitioners, and community advocates, and in some areas of the philippines and indonesia we will be scaling successful efforts across entire cities. Toward the end of the year we began investigating ways to sustainably finance these initiatives in the future, which could incorporate the private sector more fully and have even more sweeping impacts.

u. S. /canada: gaia provided technical and strategic support, resources, and information to dozens of members and allies in the u. S. As they worked to address pressing waste issues in their communities. After putting out a crucial statement about our stance on critical environmental issues and threats in late 2016, we began to organize the first face-to-face convening for this region in many years. The immediate interest in this gathering from our members was stunning, as dozens expressed interest in attending. Gaia has also increasingly worked to provide technical support to new cities and communities adopting zero waste goals and has advocated for city networks to ensure zero waste standards that do not include incineration. For example, we continued our efforts with united workers in baltimore to advocate for zero waste by sharing draft language from other cities in our network for baltimores own zero waste resolution and we also supported zero waste initiatives and a city-wide conference in boston. In addition, our work in north america was increasingly connected to our global plastics initiative. In the past year, over 260 north american organizations signed on to support the break free from plastics (bffp) movement.

international: gaia uses a movement-building network model that empowers members to build their own capacity, facilitates international solidarity in response to local organizing efforts, and coordinates collective research and campaigns around the issues of waste, pollution, climate and environmental justice. We coordinated various international and regional listservs, reaching a substantial number of our over 800 global member organizations, and we helped to link our members to expert resources for public events and environmental impact reviews. We provided ongoing support to zero waste europe, gaias sister network in europe, where more than 300 municipalities have committed to zero waste goals and programs. Gaia continued to support members leveraging local organizing against pollution into grassroots movements for environmental justice and local, inclusive zero waste solutions. Along these lines, we began organizing an international meeting in ecuador for the summer of 2017 which will draw together organizations from mexico, ecuador, argentina, el salvador, costa rica, brazil, puerto rico, and elsewhere to generate collaborative strategy, share skills, and provide support on cross-cutting issues. We continued exploring plans to expand our efforts into africa, working with south african groups to launch efforts from there in the coming year. In addition, we organized a trip for 6 mayors from san salvador to visit san francisco for a week-long study tour, during which they learned about best practices in zero waste. In chile, we organized a series of seminars on zero waste across the country with advocates and politicians, including members of rap-al. At the same time, gaia members around the world continued to protect the environment, public health, and human rights by blocking the construction of incinerators in their communities and shifting political and financial drivers away from dirty energy. We supported groups in indonesia in their efforts to block and significantly scale back a decree that would have allowed new incinerators to receive significant financing while bypassing regulations. In a remarkable turnaround on this issue, this country is now set to host 2018s international zero waste cities conference, which will be organized by gaia and its partners. In addition, we successfully engaged with funding consortia, think tanks, and other entities around their support for sustainable zero waste systems instead of waste-to-energy facilities.