Landfill air emissions are toxic and can increase the risk of certain types of cancer. Escaping gases will typically carry toxic chemicals such as paint thinner, solvents, pesticides, and other hazardous volatile organic compounds. Not surprisingly, studies link living near landfills with cancer. Women living near solid waste landfills where gas is escaping, for example, have been found to have a four-fold increased chance of bladder cancer and leukemia.

No matter how technologically advanced a landfill is claimed to be, it will eventually leak and contaminate ground water supply. It is a terrible waste of land, especially in poor countries where millions live in slum areas, unable to afford decent living spaces.

To make matters worse, the GALFAD project will contaminate its surrounding communities not only through its landfill but additionally, through the operation of a gasification plant. Gasification is a staged incineration technology that proponents claim do not have toxic consequences for the environment and communities. In truth, staged incinerators emit comparable levels of toxic emissions when compared with conventional mass burn incinerators. Studies show that dioxins, an extremely toxic class of pollutants, are created in gasification incinerators. Dioxins cause a wide range of health problems including cancer, immune system damage, reproductive and developmental problems.

Landfills rely on a constant stream of organic matter to produce methane. In the United States, they are the largest source of anthropogenic methane emissions. Landfill gas systems directly compete with local recycling and composting efforts that offer better use for organic materials.

The project will not only increase greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, it will also destroy a successful and internationally-recognized, locally-managed waste program that has empowered a vulnerable and often unrecognized sector of workers, the informal waste workers.

Funding being given by the CDM to incineration and landfill projects represents a lost opportunity to reduce pollution and help improve the standards of living and welfare of some of the poorest people in the world. Also, funding waste disposal technologies incentivizes further waste disposal - i.e., the destruction of valuable resources that would otherwise have been recovered with significant climate benefits.