EJ Victory! Taking Responsibility for Where Your Trash Goes…

- by Mike Ewall, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network

I’m excit­ed to open this issue by shar­ing our first vic­to­ry of its kind: stop­ping a major city (Wash­ing­ton, DC) from sign­ing a long-term incin­er­a­tion con­tract that was expen­sive, pol­lut­ing, unhealthy, and racist.

The worst thing that can hap­pen with your waste is for it to be burned. We’ve found this to be the case with waste from Wash­ing­ton, DC, Philadel­phia and New York City, where trash ends up being burned in some of the nation’s largest and filth­i­est incin­er­a­tors – in com­mu­ni­ties of col­or in Lor­ton, Vir­ginia and Chester, Penn­syl­va­nia that are already heav­i­ly pol­lut­ed by a con­cen­tra­tion of dirty industries.

These major cities have closed incin­er­a­tors with­in their bor­ders many years ago, and DC, New York and Los Ange­les are among many that have exam­ined and reject­ed the idea of build­ing their own new incin­er­a­tors in the last few years. How­ev­er, they have not been shy about send­ing waste to be burned in oth­er communities.

The zero waste term is being hijacked by these cities, auto com­pa­nies, Dis­ney, and oth­ers claim­ing “zero waste to land­fill” goals. This term is a code word for “incin­er­ate our remain­ing waste and pre­tend the tox­ic ash doesn’t still go to land­fills.” Lead­ing zero waste con­sul­tants and activist allies are even now green­wash­ing these schemes through cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and mem­ber­ship in bod­ies like the U.S. Zero Waste Busi­ness Coun­cil. Just last month, the U.S. Con­fer­ence of May­ors adopt­ed a zero waste res­o­lu­tion that includes a waste hier­ar­chy that, like EPA’s, places incin­er­a­tors above land­fill­ing, dri­ving more mis­guid­ed city deci­sions to opt for incinerators.

Our vic­to­ry in DC shows that envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice allies in a major city can take respon­si­bil­i­ty and stop their waste from being burned, as we chart the way to true zero waste strategies.

As the last few arti­cles in this issue show, there are con­flicts between waste strate­gies among grass­roots activists in New York City. What start­ed as an effort to have fair dis­tri­b­u­tion of trans­fer sta­tions with­in the city result­ed in the worst pos­si­ble out­come for envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice: a 20–30 year con­tract to send much of the city’s waste to be burned in Cov­an­ta incin­er­a­tors in Nia­gara Falls, NY and in Chester, PA. Our efforts to stop the trash train plan on the Chester end failed last sum­mer, and efforts are still under­way in Man­hat­tan to stop one of the two trans­fer points that would feed waste to Covanta’s incin­er­a­tors, but aren’t look­ing good.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, NYC May­or de Blasio’s “One New York” plan, announced this past Earth Day, is a “zero waste to land­fill” plan that masks the city’s intent to keep burn­ing its waste in facil­i­ties that would nev­er be accept­ed with­in the city. The Cov­an­ta con­tract con­tains clever “put-or-pay” pro­vi­sions that ensure that NYC pays for waste trans­porta­tion to Cov­an­ta incin­er­a­tors even if zero waste efforts are so suc­cess­ful that the city doesn’t have enough waste to give. Will the city even come close to its zero waste goals, and if so, will they suck up the penal­ty of pay­ing for a ser­vice they no longer need, or will bud­get con­straints keep NYC poi­son­ing peo­ple with incin­er­a­tor pollution?