Tag: waste to energy

  • 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…

  • 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”…

  • 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)…

  • 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…

  • 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.…

  • Shuttered Claremont, New Hampshire Incinerator to Reopen

    – by Patrick O’Grady, April 15, 2015, Valley News The shuttered Wheelabrator incinerator on Grissom Lane was sold at auction Tuesday for $1.63 million, with the buyer saying he plans to use it to burn municipal waste. As several bidders stood outside the plant hoping to pick up pieces of equipment at a bargain price, auctioneer…

  • Landfill Keeps Rhode Island Incinerator Debate Alive

    – by Tim Faulkner, March 4, 2015, Eco RI News The seemingly annual debate about building a waste incinerator in Rhode Island resolved little on the issue this year, except that any such facility is too expensive and likely at least 10 years from ever being built. The sole advocate for considering an incinerator is the…