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Category: Blog entry

  • When Zero Waste is Environmental Racism

    - by Kaya Ban­ton, Chester Envi­ron­men­tal Justice My name is Kaya Ban­ton and I have been a res­i­dent of Chester, Penn­syl­va­nia all of my life.  Chester is a small city right out­side of Philadel­phia known as one of the worst cas­es of envi­ron­men­tal racism. There are a num­ber of pol­lut­ing facil­i­ties in and sur­round­ing Chester.…

  • WE WON!! Environmental Justice Victory in DC, as Mayor Pulls Incinerator Contract

    - by Mike Ewall, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network We just stopped Wash­ing­ton, DC from approv­ing a $36–78 mil­lion con­tract that was award­ed to Cov­an­ta to burn the Dis­tric­t’s waste for the next 5–11 years. In a rigged bid­ding process, the city allowed just four incin­er­a­tors (no land­fills) to bid to take 200,000 tons of waste a year.…

  • 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.…

  • Transform Don’t Trash NYC

    - by Gavin Kear­ney (Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Direc­tor, New York Lawyers for the Pub­lic Inter­est) & Eddie Bautista (Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, New York City Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Alliance) New York City’s homes and busi­ness­es gen­er­ate any­where from 6 to 8 mil­lion tons of mixed sol­id waste every year – more than any oth­er city in the coun­try. And the man­ner…

  • New York City Outsourcing Incineration

    - by Dara Hunt Con­grat­u­la­tions to Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions on stop­ping a Cov­an­ta con­tract to incin­er­ate DC waste in an Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice community.  Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we have not suc­ceed­ed in stop­ping New York City’s plan, and a 20-year con­tract with Cov­an­ta Ener­gy to trans­port and burn 800,000 tons per year, or more, of New…

  • EXCLUSIVE: Biomass Energy and the Carbon Neutral Shell Game

    - by Brett Leuen­berg­er, July 6, 2015 (Graph­ics by Brett Leuenberger) Who would have ever thought that clean renew­able ener­gy could come from a smoke­stack? And yet, accord­ing to our U.S. gov­ern­ment and the bio­mass indus­try, that’s exact­ly what’s hap­pen­ing when you burn trees (bio­mass) for ener­gy. I don’t know about you, but when it comes…

  • Remembering Marvin Wheeler

    - by Mike Ewall, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network  When we formed Allen­town Res­i­dents for Clean Air (ARCA) in 2012, we could­n’t have kicked it off with­out Mar­vin Wheel­er, who found us as an active mem­ber of the West Park Civic Asso­ci­a­tion. As a retired school nurse, Mar­vin under­stood the health threat posed by the plan to burn 150…

  • Are Media Outlets Megaphones for Polluters?

    Are Media Out­lets Mega­phones for Polluters? Thurs­day, May 21, 2015 at 5pm PST / 8 ET Guest Speak­er: Steve Horn, Inves­tiga­tive Journalist Are media out­lets doing an ade­quate job cov­er­ing the health and envi­ron­men­tal impacts of dirty ener­gy cor­po­ra­tions and oth­er polluters? Not accord­ing to Steve Horn, a Madi­son, Wis­con­sin-based free­lance inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist and writer for DeSmog­Blog. Steve has…

  • $355,375 Grant to Install Biomass Heating in Massachusetts Elementary Schools

    - Mass­a­chu­setts Exec­u­tive Office of Ener­gy and Envi­ron­men­tal Affairs, May 5, 2015, Bio­mass Magazine The admin­is­tra­tion of Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Char­lie Bak­er and Lt. Gov. Karyn Poli­to has announced grant fund­ing for Heath Ele­men­tary School in Heath and the Hawle­mont Ele­men­tary School in Charlemont to con­vert to high­ly effi­cient bio­mass boil­ers from their exist­ing oil heat­ing sys­tems.…

  • Solar Generation May Sideline Biomass Heating

    [Note: this arti­cle is writ­ten by long-time wood stove cheer­leader, John Ack­er­ly.  It’s nice to see him admit­ting that his wood-burn­ing dreams are about to be dashed by solar pow­er.  Ener­gy Jus­tice does not sup­port com­bus­tion sources for heat­ing, since non-burn alter­na­tives exist, and since there are many pol­lu­tion and health prob­lems relat­ing to wood stoves.]…