Tag: trash

  • 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…

  • Florida Trash Incinerator Proposal Bites the Dust

    (Source: Laurie K. Blandford and Anthony Westbury, TC Palm) A trash incinerator proposal for St. Lucie, Florida has fallen through following a unanimous decision by the St. Lucie County Commissioners to terminate the contract with Georgia-based Geoplasma, citing economic concerns. The 24 megawatt incinerator would’ve incinerated 600 tons of trash per day using a technology called plasma arc, which…

  • 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.…

  • Zero Waste Hierarchy

    You’ve probably heard the term Zero Waste before, but not been sure about what it meant The peer-reviewed definition of Zero Waste by Zero Waste International Alliance involves “designing and managing products and processes to systematically avoid and eliminate the volume and toxicity of waste and materials, conserve and recover all resources, and not burn or bury…

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • College Trash Habits Cause Concern, as Does Incinerator in Chester

    – by Bobby Zipp, November 20, 2014,  Swarthmore Phoenix Two weeks ago, a group of the Green Advisors conducted a waste audit of Kohlberg Hall and the Science Center. The purpose of the annual audit is to create a visual representation of the amount of waste produced by those buildings and test how well the…

  • 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…

  • 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.…