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Tag: trash

  • 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”…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.…

  • One Bin for All?

    - by Melanie Scrug­gs, Texas Cam­paign for the Environment Right now, the City of Hous­ton is expand­ing its two-bin or “sin­gle-stream” recy­cling pro­gram to final­ly cov­er all the near­ly 350,000 homes that it ser­vices. As an avid zero waster, you may be think­ing two things: 1. It is fan­tas­tic that Hous­to­ni­ans final­ly have access to a…

  • Out of the Garbage Can and Into the Fire

    - by Mike Ewall So-called “waste-to-ener­gy” (WTE) is usu­al­ly a euphemism for trash incin­er­a­tion, dis­pos­ing of waste while mak­ing mod­est amounts of elec­tric­i­ty and some­times steam for heat­ing pur­pos­es. Now, waste-to-fuels (WTF?) — turn­ing waste into liq­uid fuels for trans­porta­tion — is start­ing to emerge as a sub­set of WTE. Not­ing their acronym prob­lem, the indus­try has…

  • Zero Waste to Landfill: How Incinerators Get Promoted

    - by Car­o­line Eader The incin­er­a­tor indus­try pro­motes a false belief that the only choic­es we have in han­dling our waste is to either burn it for ener­gy or to bury it in a land­fill. The exis­tence of what is known as a “waste-to-ener­gy” (WTE) facil­i­ty does not elim­i­nate the need for a land­fill. First, 10%…

  • Concerns About Syracuse, NY Trash Incinerator Pollution

    - Jan­u­ary 6, 2015, Local­SYR It’s the next step to allow trash from Cort­land Coun­ty to be brought into Ononda­ga County’s Waste to Ener­gy facility. Both coun­ties’ leg­is­la­tures this week have held pub­lic hear­ings on the so called “Ash for Trash” plan. For two decades now Ononda­ga Coun­ty’s Waste to Ener­gy facil­i­ty has been burn­ing trash only…