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Tag: incinerator

  • Maryland, Maryland, Quite Contrary-land

    Since 2011, Mary­land has been noto­ri­ous for being the only state to clas­si­fy trash as equiv­a­lent to wind pow­er in a renew­able ener­gy man­date. Over half of the “renew­able” ener­gy used to meet the man­date still comes from smoke­stacks at paper mills, land­fills, trash, and bio­mass incin­er­a­tors in 12 states span­ning New Jer­sey to Wis­con­sin to Tennessee.…

  • Waste Done Right

    - by Ruth Tyson, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network In 2012, Amer­i­cans dis­posed of 251 mil­lion tons of trash, accord­ing to the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA). The Sto­ry of Stuff Project neat­ly lays out the way mate­ri­als move through our econ­o­my from extrac­tion to pro­duc­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, con­sump­tion, and dis­pos­al. Most con­sumers don’t think beyond the “con­sump­tion”…

  • Baltimore Incinerator Proposal Permit Yanked

    On March 17, the per­mit for the Ener­gy Answers trash incin­er­a­tor planned for the Cur­tis Bay neigh­bor­hood of Bal­ti­more, Mary­land was declared invalid by the Mary­land Depart­ment of the Envi­ron­ment, cap­ping years of protest from local res­i­dents and a stu­dent-led orga­ni­za­tion, Free Your Voice, part of Unit­ed Workers. The pro­posed incin­er­a­tor would be the largest in the nation,…

  • Maine Towns Vote Whether to Burn Trash or Make Biogas

    Actu­al­ly, there’s a third (and bet­ter) option and it’s called Zero Waste. - by Andy O’Brien, April 7, 2016, The Free Press On March 31, 2018, it will no longer be eco­nom­i­cal for mid­coast towns to send their house­hold trash to the  Penob­scot Ener­gy Recov­ery Co. (PERC) incin­er­a­tor in Orring­ton. That’s the date when the facil­i­ty los­es a…

  • Energy Information Administration: Trash Incineration About Disposal, Not Energy

    The fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­stra­tion puts to rest the idea that “waste-to-ener­gy” facil­i­ties exist to cre­ate elec­tric­i­ty, instead admit­ting that their main func­tion is to dis­pose of trash, with elec­tric­i­ty as a byproduct. - April 6, 2016, U.S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Administration At the end of 2015, the Unit­ed States had 71 waste-to-ener­gy (WTE)…

  • Compost Chicken Manure, Don’t Burn It

    - by Mike Ewall, Decem­ber 19, 2014, Bal­ti­more Sun  Dan Rodricks’ recent col­umn urged the new gov­er­nor to get a large-scale poul­try waste incin­er­a­tor built on the East­ern Shore (“Lar­ry Hogan has a chance to be a green gov­er­nor,” Dec. 13). This awful idea has been float­ed for 15 years now and has gone nowhere despite an array…

  • 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…