Experts reject incineration as climate solution at COP31

Cli­mate ad­vo­cates, re­searchers and youth lead­ers are call­ing on gov­ern­ments to re­ject waste in­cin­er­a­tion and pri­ori­tise ze­ro-waste so­lu­tions as part of ef­forts to tack­le the cli­mate cri­sis.

At a press con­fer­ence at the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence (COP31) yes­ter­day, speak­ers ar­gued that burn­ing waste and ex­pand­ing dis­pos­al in­fra­struc­ture would not ad­dress the root caus­es of the waste cri­sis.

In­stead, they urged gov­ern­ments and cli­mate fi­nanciers to in­vest in waste pre­ven­tion, reuse, re­pair, re­cy­cling and com­post­ing, warn­ing that in­cin­er­a­tion could cre­ate ad­di­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal and fi­nan­cial bur­dens for com­mu­ni­ties.