Other Greenpeace activists occupied the bunker unit inside the plant by climbing on the cranes that feed the combustion chamber with solid wastes at a temperature of 1200 degrees Centigrade. IZAYDAS management acted extremely irresponsible by moving the cranes with activists attached to them and causing the activists to be exposed to hazardous wastes. The plant should have been stopped properly with emergency procedures and it is scandalous that nothing was done at the plant to decontaminate the activists and the gendarme who were exposed to toxic waste. They needed to be decontaminated immediately. Instead, they were held for half an hour at the site with no doctor or any treatment and decontaminated only at the police station.

Greenpeace activists and the president of Kocaeli Environment Protection Association, Nuriye Kazaner who was at the front gate, contacted the new Turkish Minister of Environment Osman Pepe on his mobile during the action. Greenpeace demands that they stop this dirty technology, to clarify their waste management strategy and to implement the steps of the Stockholm Convention (1). The Minister, who was at Trabzon airport discussing with the Governor of Trabzon about plans to build an incinerator there at that moment, congratulated the activists and accepted to look into alternative technologies and policies offered by Greenpeace in the coming days.

The symbolic waste barrels that the activists were attached to had names of the cities of Istanbul, Izmit, Eskisehir, Trabzon written on them, representing the locations in Turkey where there already are incinerators or are planned. After the Minister?s response the activists ended the blockade of the front gate. 21 Greenpeace activists and Nuriye Kazaner are now under custody.

The Greenpeace action today is a part of global actions in 62 countries with more than 200 organisations against incineration to show the public opposition and to demand an end to this dirty technology worldwide.
The people in Istanbul and Izmit, where the existing incinerators are, and Trabzon and Eskisehir where new plants are planned to be built, strongly oppose this cancer- causing and expensive technology. Their demand is a new waste policy that should be based on reducing, reusing, recycling (3R), and clean production measures.

The Greenpeace action is also supported by Alikahya Municipal Board Member Ayhan Gökmen, representing the Alikahya people, where the locals are under threat of evacuation from their homes due to the hazards of Izaydas incinerator after a statement of Ministry of Environment in 2001. (2) They both demanded the cancellation of the Izaydas operating licence as soon as possible so as not to cause further damage to peoples? lives and their environment.

The damage Izaydas causes was proved by the scientific analyses of the ash samples taken by Greenpeace in 2000 (3) from the incinerator. It showed elevated levels of heavy metals, dioxins and PCBs which are targeted for elimination in the POPs treaty.

"The ex-Minister of Environment legalised a dirty technology by granting a license of operation to Izaydas which contradicts his 1998 letter sent to all the governors in Turkey stating that incineration is unsafe and expensive and that Turkey should move to other cleaner technologies. So we demand that the new Ministry cancel this permit and pass a national ban on all incineration in Turkey with a proper waste policy,? said Banu Dokmecibasi, Toxics campaigner for Greenpeace Mediterranean in Turkey.

Today?s actions also coincide with the first day of the Seventh Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC 7) meeting of the Stockholm Convention (4) on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). The Convention, which has been signed by 154 countries including Turkey, aims to eliminate the most persistent toxic substances known to science, including the cancer-causing dioxins and furans. Greenpeace activists called on the governments to act urgently and to ratify and implement the Treaty.

Greenpeace also launched the report prepared by GAIA (Global Alliance Against Incineration) called ?Waste Incineration: A Dying Technology,? which explains why incinerators are an unsustainable and obsolete method for dealing with waste. The GAIA report concludes that incineration is a dying technology in all aspects. (5)

Public opposition has killed many proposed and existing incinerators worldwide. For instance, a massive grassroots movement has defeated more than 300 municipal waste incinerator proposals in the United States in the last 15 years. In Japan, the most incinerator intensive country, public pressure has resulted in over 500 incinerators being shut down in recent years. Jurisdictions in 15 countries have passed partial bans on incineration and one country, the Philippines, has banned all incineration. (6)

The British Greenpeace activists Huw Williams and Francis Alexander Greenney said ?The waste management policy was reviewed with less based on incineration and more based on alternatives and recycling, after a strong opposition and campaign against incineration in UK. Also many local authorities excluded incineration to avoid more costs and health hazards in the country?.

The POPs treaty has once and for all shattered the myth that incineration is a solution for today?s waste problems. Action must be taken to shut down this incinerator and to legally abolish the irreversible health and environmental degradation being caused by incineration,? Dokmecibasi added.

Greenpeace demands and expects the recently appointed Ministry of Environment to clarify the waste management strategy of Turkey that should lead to clean production, and not rely on old wrong decisions taken before, which were not in agreement with the POPs Treaty.

For more information:
Banu Dokmecibasi, Toxics Campaigner for Greenpeace Mediterranean Office in Turkey:
Phone: +90-532-2631114
Ertan Keskinsoy, Communications Officer, Greenpeace Mediterranean Office in Turkey
Phone: +90-212-2927619
Mobile: +90-532-3243204

Greenpeace Mediterranean Office, +90212 292 76 19-20
PHOTOS FROM THE GREENPEACE ACTION AND THE DOCUMENTS ON INCINERATION (in english and turkish) CAN BE DOWNLOADED AT THE WEB SITE: http://www.petrolunsonu.org

Notes to editors:
1) Greenpeace today also sent a letter with these questions to the Turkish Minister of Environment, Osman Pepe.
2) 16,000 people living next to the incinerator will be directly affected by toxic emissions. A letter from the Ministry of Environment has already ordered the evacuation of all communities living within a three- kilometre radius of the Izmit incinerator. This affects the communities of Alikahya (1 kilometre away) and Solaklar villages (700 meters away).
3) Ash collected from the electrostatic precipitator (MI0065) yielded the highest levels of heavy metal contamination, comprising 1.5% by weight of copper, 6.6% zinc and 2.5% lead. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were identified in all of the ash samples analysed, including in the bottom ash. In addition, chlorinated dioxins were identified in the two samples of fly ash.
4) The Convention identifies all waste incinerators, including cement kilns burning hazardous wastes, as major sources of dioxins and furans and polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs and recommends the use of substitute techniques to avoid the generation of these unintentionally produced pollutants. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) reports that incinerators account for 69% of dioxin emissions worldwide.
5) The GAIA report can be obtained from the Greenpeace Mediterranean Office in Turkey.
6) The paper on the incineration bans in the world can be downloaded from www.petrolunsonu.org