We're 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 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?

​Environmental Justice Victory in DC

- 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. The one of the four that is in a rural white community does not accept out-of-county waste, leaving three incinerators in heavily populated communities of color as the only ones eligible to bid. The contract was awarded to Covanta's incinerator in Lorton, VA -- 4th largest in the nation and one of the largest polluters in the DC metro region. Lorton is the 12th most diverse community of color in the nation, and is also home to a sewage sludge incinerator and three landfills.

As I documented in an article last year, DC's waste system is a glaring example of environmental racism, from where the waste transfer stations are, to where much of it ends up in Lorton.

We did our homework and made a strong case, got diverse allies on board, educated and pressured DC city council, and flattened Covanta's 11th hour lies. Energy Justice Network was joined by 20 environmental, public health, civil rights and business organizations in calling on city council not to move the contract to final approval, and ultimately, our new mayor withdrew it from consideration, killing it.

The city will now have to cut a 1-year contract (hopefully not with any incinerator, if we can help it). This buys us time to convince city leaders that incinerators are indeed worse than landfills and that we need to resort to landfilling as we get the city's zero waste goals implemented, including digestion of residuals prior to landfilling.

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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. The most famous is Covanta, the nation’s largest waste incinerator, burning 3,510 tons of trash per day. Though Covanta is the largest incinerator in the country, they have the fewest pollution controls of any incinerator in the nation. Within a mile of Covanta, 80% of the population is black. Only 1.5% of waste being burned at Covanta comes from Chester. The rest comes from wealthy suburban areas of Delaware County, Philadelphia, and New York.Covanta is the largest polluter in Chester and one of the largest in all of eastern Pennsylvania.  

Due to the pollutants from Covanta and other industries, many people in Chester have cancer, asthma, and other horrific diseases. I know entire families that have asthma or cancer. Both my mother and my little sister developed chronic asthma after moving to Chester. The childhood asthma hospitalization rate in Chester is three times the state average. 

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We are accepting submissions at Josh AT energyjustice DOT net.

Check out our archive of back issues of Energy Justice Now.

In Solidarity,

Mike, Josh, and Samantha 

Editors, Energy Justice Now

Please donate and join Energy Justice Network.

Find Out Where Your Waste Goes

Do you know where your trash goes "away" to be buried (or burned-then-buried)? We'd like to support more of you to tackle the front-end of the waste pipeline, working in solidarity with communities living with landfills and incinerators.

Many waste and energy contracts for incinerators are expiring in the next few years, and there are opportunities to get these redirected to clean energy and zero waste options.

Use our mapping site to find landfills and incinerators near you, and contact us for guidance on how to trace where your trash actually goes.

 New York City Outsourcing Incineration

- by Dara Hunt

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 York City's putrescible waste in poorly filtered Covanta incinerators in Chester, PA, and Niagara Falls, NY.

This disposal strategy is part of New York City's 20-Year, 2006 Solid Waste Management Plan (SWMP). The SWMP didn't set aggressive waste reduction goals for New York City or establish concrete plans to reform the City's poorly regulated private waste industry. A modest 25 percent recycling target set in the SWMP has never been achieved -- the City's recycling rates remain at abysmal levels: 15-16 percent for City collected waste and around 24 percent for privately collected waste. Instead, the SWMP focused on building large and expensive, single-purpose waste transport facilities and long-term contracts to move waste to distant disposal sites.

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Transform, Don't Trash NYC

- by Gavin Kearney, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest & Eddie Bautista, 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 in which it manages that waste is rife with injustice -- a few NYC communities of color play host to numerous truck-intensive transfer facilities, while other communities of color as near as Newark and as far as Virginia and Ohio then receive NYC's waste for landfilling and incineration.

For over a decade we have been working with environmental justice advocates and other allies in NYC to address these issues. We have achieved some important incremental victories over pitched opposition. But much remains to be done. 

Ultimately, if it is to do right by Environmental Justice (EJ) communities, NYC needs to greatly diminish the amount of material it exports for disposal and build local recycling infrastructure while minimizing community impacts, creating a safer workplace for waste workers, and reducing environmental harms. To build the will for this within the City we are working to expand the local discussion around solid waste to encompass worker well-being, economic development, climate change, fair treatment for small businesses, and, of course, environmental justice.

This is the focus of our current, ongoing campaign for solid waste reform: Transform Don’t Trash NYC.

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