VICTORY! On 12/20/2024, EPA grant­ed our peti­tion filed in 2023 by Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work and Pub­lic Employ­ees for Envi­ron­men­tal Respon­si­bil­i­ty to require waste incin­er­a­tors to start annu­al­ly report­ing their tox­ic chem­i­cals releas­es to the agen­cy’s Tox­i­cs Release Inven­to­ry (TRI) data­base. This includes emis­sions to the air, water, and land and is expect­ed to cov­er about 60 facil­i­ties: main­ly trash incin­er­a­tors, but also a por­tion of the nation’s med­ical waste incin­er­a­tors, com­mer­cial and indus­tri­al incin­er­a­tors, and waste incin­er­a­tors using pyrol­y­sis or gasi­fi­ca­tion, where incin­er­a­tion is the main aspect of the facil­i­ty’s busi­ness. Report­ing will include the amounts of tox­ic chem­i­cals in their ash, and where that ash goes. As of late Decem­ber 2024, there are now 63 oper­at­ing trash incin­er­a­tors and a hand­ful of med­ical waste and pyrol­y­sis and gasi­fi­ca­tion waste incin­er­a­tors that this could apply to. Read the EPA response and our press release for more, and see our page on the TRI peti­tion for back­ground and a list of the 313 groups sup­port­ing our efforts.

In Ore­gon, Sen­ate Bill 488, a prece­dent-set­ting bill to con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor tox­ic emis­sions from waste incin­er­a­tion, passed into law with the gov­er­nor’s sig­na­ture on August 4, 2023. See the lat­est news cov­er­age in Waste Dive (8/3/2023): Ore­gon becomes first state to require con­tin­u­ous emis­sions mon­i­tor­ing at incin­er­a­tors.

The law requires the state’s only trash incin­er­a­tor (Cov­an­ta Mar­i­on) to have to con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor for dioxins/furans, PCBs, and tox­ic met­als for 12 months. They’d be the first in the nation to have to use this mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy, and it’ll like­ly expose that actu­al tox­ic air emis­sions are far high­er than what is shown by once-per-year self-admin­is­tered “best behav­ior” tests. Con­tin­u­ous test­ing at incin­er­a­tors in Europe has shown that diox­ins, the most tox­ic chem­i­cals known to sci­ence, are emit­ted at rates 32 to 1,290 times high­er than we think they are in the U.S. when we test just once a year.

This will have nation­al impli­ca­tions once that data comes out. It’s the first time these tox­ic chem­i­cals will be test­ed con­tin­u­ous­ly in the U.S., and should put to rest the claims that the test­ing tech­nol­o­gy is not available.

This hard-won vic­to­ry could not have hap­pened with­out the work of our mem­ber groups, Beyond Tox­i­cs and the Clean Air Now Coali­tion. Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work has been work­ing with them since 2019 to close the Cov­an­ta Mar­i­on waste incin­er­a­tor, burn­ing trash, med­ical, and indus­tri­al wastes in the large­ly Lat­inx com­mu­ni­ty of Brooks, just north of Salem.

Requir­ing con­tin­u­ous emis­sions mon­i­tor­ing is one of the key strate­gies we’ve been using to pre­vent air pol­lut­ing indus­tries with local ordi­nances and to hold exist­ing ones account­able. It’s one of the key points we raised in a 274-group strong Octo­ber 2022 let­ter to the White House Coun­cil on Envi­ron­men­tal Qual­i­ty about EPA’s bad poli­cies relat­ing to waste incineration.

If we reg­u­lat­ed motorists the way we do most pol­lu­tants from smoke­stacks, it would be akin to enforc­ing a speed lim­it by allow­ing dri­vers to dri­ve all year with no speedome­ter. Once a year, a speed trap would be set on the high­way with signs warn­ing “slow down… speed trap ahead,” and the dri­ver’s broth­er would be run­ning the speed trap (com­pa­nies choose who they pay to con­duct the test).

For near­ly every­thing with a smoke­stack in the U.S., con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing is only used for three pol­lu­tants, and none of the tox­ic ones. As we change this real­i­ty and find that we’re exposed to far more than we real­ize, it could be a game chang­er for get­ting these tox­ic indus­tries closed for good.

Cov­an­ta’s trash incin­er­a­tor in Mont­gomery Coun­ty, Mary­land is the largest air indus­tri­al pol­luter in the coun­ty, by far. Fol­low­ing a mas­sive waste pile fire that burned for near­ly two weeks in late 2016, we’ve been sup­port­ing our mem­ber group, Sug­ar­loaf Cit­i­zens’ Asso­ci­a­tion, to close this incin­er­a­tor for good. We worked with them and oth­er local envi­ron­men­tal lead­ers form­ing Zero Waste Mont­gomery Coun­ty to issue the March 2021 report, “Beyond Incin­er­a­tion: Best Waste Man­age­ment Strate­gies for Mont­gomery Coun­ty, Mary­land” to sup­port the coun­ty’s com­mit­ment to end incineration.

This report was cit­ed in the Decem­ber 3, 2021 let­ter from Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Marc Elrich announc­ing plans to close this coun­ty-owned, Cov­an­ta-oper­at­ed trash incin­er­a­tor (one of the youngest in the coun­try) with­in 12–18 months. This dead­line was missed, how­ev­er, and the coun­ty is now delay­ing the incin­er­a­tor’s clo­sure until an alter­na­tive waste pro­cess­ing facil­i­ty is in place.

While polit­i­cal lead­ers seem to think that incin­er­a­tion is bet­ter than land­fill­ing, and do not real­ize that the coun­ty is land­fill­ing tox­ic ash in a Black com­mu­ni­ty near Rich­mond, Vir­ginia, this detailed report doc­u­ments how incin­er­a­tion is actu­al­ly far worse than land­fill­ing and that no trans­porta­tion dis­tance to a land­fill can jus­ti­fy con­tin­ued in-coun­ty incin­er­a­tion. This report analy­ses the alter­na­tives, and rec­om­mends what the coun­ty should do. It debunks pro-incin­er­a­tor pro­pa­gan­da by Cov­an­ta and the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency. Fur­ther resources on incin­er­a­tion are on our incin­er­a­tion page.

Find the report here: www.energyjustice.net/md/beyond.pdf

The pow­er­point with overview slides is here: www.energyjustice.net/md/beyondppt.pdf

The report’s chap­ters include:
Chap­ter 1: Zero Waste Strate­gies Have More Poten­tial than DEP & HDR Portray
Chap­ter 2: The Case Against Incineration
Chap­ter 3: Green­house Gas­es & Cre­ative Accounting
Chap­ter 4: Land­fill­ing vs. Incineration
Chap­ter 5: Envi­ron­men­tal Racism
Chap­ter 6: Site 2 Landfill
Chap­ter 7: Choos­ing the Best Landfill
Chap­ter 8: Cost of Incin­er­a­tion vs. Landfilling
Chap­ter 9: The path forward

Chap­ter 4’s Life Cycle Analy­sis proves that incin­er­a­tion (and land­fill­ing ash) is far worse than direct land­fill­ing, even after fac­tor­ing in much larg­er trans­porta­tion dis­tances. Long-haul truck or rail to land­fill sites amount­ed to only about 3% of the green­house gas impacts of land­fill­ing. The chart below sum­ma­rizes the find­ing, com­par­ing the Mont­gomery Coun­ty trash incin­er­a­tor to the com­pos­ite results of 10 land­fills stud­ied. Incin­er­a­tion at the coun­ty’s incin­er­a­tor has health and envi­ron­men­tal impacts total­ing $258.58/ton while land­fill­ing (aver­age of 10 land­fills stud­ied) totaled $80.15/ton — impacts that are more than three times low­er than incineration.

by Mike Ewall, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Ener­gy Jus­tice Network

[See relat­ed inter­view here.]

If I were to write a doc­u­men­tary expos­ing the dis­mal state of recy­cling in the U.S., I’d be right to point out how much is not being recy­cled, how pol­lut­ing recy­cling can be, and how inad­e­quate it is to try to solve the waste prob­lem. I’d be right to call for more empha­sis on reduc­ing and reusing before recy­cling; how­ev­er, I’d also be clear that the answer is not to stop recy­cling and just land­fill every­thing, or worse, incin­er­ate it, then land­fill tox­ic ash.

Plan­et of the Humans trash­es wind, solar, bio­mass, bio­fu­els, hydro­gen, elec­tric cars, and ener­gy stor­age as if they’re all ter­ri­ble, with­out offer­ing solu­tions, and with­out dis­tin­guish­ing which are inher­ent­ly bad, and which are gen­er­al­ly good and can con­tin­ue to be improved. It’s basi­cal­ly a sales pitch for Ozzie Zehn­er’s 2012 Green Illu­sions book (which you can find free online here).

There is a lot that Plan­et of the Humans gets right. And sev­er­al things they get real­ly wrong. Sad­ly, the film is now being used to hype up nat­ur­al gas and nuclear pow­er.

Let’s be clear.

The film was right to…

• crit­i­cize bio­mass, bio­fu­els, and hydrogen;
  
• show that wind and solar have some prob­lems, too;
  
• expose con­flict­ed and clue­less envi­ron­men­tal groups, and “green” polit­i­cal and busi­ness lead­ers; and
  
• point to the need to reduce con­sump­tion, includ­ing by lim­it­ing human population.

The film got it wrong about…

• inter­mit­tent renew­ables need­ing to be backed up by fos­sil fuels;
  
• ener­gy stor­age need­ing to match generation;
  
• renew­ables not replac­ing fos­sil fuels;
  
• renew­ables using more fos­sil fuels than they replace;
  
• ethanol being large­ly coal-powered;
  
• imply­ing that there’s some­thing wrong with claim­ing to be 100% renew­able while being tied to the elec­tric grid;
  
• …and more.

The film missed a lot, too. Notably…

• omit­ting any men­tion of sys­temic solutions;
  
• some “renew­able” sources that are more deserv­ing of cri­tique than wind and solar;
  
• that nuclear pow­er is not a clean solu­tion, either; and
  
• that there’s a thriv­ing grass­roots envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice move­ment that is worth supporting.

Before div­ing into all the rights, wrongs, and miss­ings, let’s quick­ly point out a few things:

1. There are three sec­tors of ener­gy con­sump­tion: elec­tric­i­ty, trans­porta­tion, and heat­ing. The film most­ly focus­es on elec­tric­i­ty, and each sec­tor is han­dled with a pret­ty dif­fer­ent mix of fuels. See our page on U.S. ener­gy sources for context. 
2. When dis­cussing solu­tions, elec­tric­i­ty needs should be met first by con­ser­va­tion, then effi­cien­cy, then solar, wind, and per­haps some ocean-based solu­tions once they’re ready. A mod­est amount of ener­gy stor­age will be need­ed to bal­ance it all. The trans­porta­tion and heat­ing fuel sec­tors need to be solved with con­ser­va­tion and effi­cien­cy first and sec­ond as well. For trans­porta­tion, the rest should be elec­tri­fied as much as pos­si­ble. Planes and boats will be a chal­lenge, but all land-based trans­porta­tion needs to run on elec­tric­i­ty from wind and solar. For heat­ing, solar ther­mal, heat pumps, and elec­tri­fi­ca­tion should meet as much demand as pos­si­ble. Indus­tri­al heat­ing will be a chal­lenge and should main­ly be tack­led by reduc­ing demand for ener­gy inten­sive prod­ucts like paper and cement. No sol­id fuels should be burned in any case. In over­con­sum­ing nations like the U.S., we should be cut­ting ener­gy and mate­r­i­al use at least by half. 

3. There’s a world of dif­fer­ence between ener­gy sources that require fuel and those that do not. Wind, solar, and water pow­er are gen­uine­ly renew­able, even though they have impacts. Oth­er ener­gy sources — nuclear, hydro­gen, and any­thing that involves burn­ing any­thing (fos­sil fuels, bio­mass and waste incin­er­a­tion, bio­fu­els) — require a con­stant stream of extrac­tion, con­sump­tion, pol­lu­tion, and waste. The machines for every type of pow­er involve min­ing of mate­ri­als and var­i­ous pol­lu­tion and health impacts. How­ev­er, for gen­uine renew­ables, that dam­age large­ly stops once the machine is built, and there isn’t ongo­ing pol­lu­tion per kilo­watt-hour. This is the main divid­ing line we use to dis­tin­guish clean from dirty ener­gy sources. 

WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT

Bio­mass, bio­fu­els, and hydro­gen are false solutions

Ener­gy Jus­tice Net­work was fea­tured in the sec­tion on bio­mass, from an inter­view eight years ago with our for­mer staff mem­ber, Josh Schloss­berg. Jeff Gibbs was part of our nation­al Anti-Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tion Cam­paign, which brought togeth­er hun­dreds of com­mu­ni­ty activists to suc­cess­ful­ly stop sev­er­al dozen pro­posed bio­mass incin­er­a­tors between 2006 and 2015.

Our years of work in Bal­ti­more are pay­ing off!

On March 7, 2019, the Bal­ti­more’s May­or Pugh signed into law our Bal­ti­more Clean Air Act. This is the cul­mi­na­tion of years of work to close the high­ly pol­lut­ing waste incin­er­a­tors in the city. It’s also a new phase in our ongo­ing work to tran­si­tion Bal­ti­more from incin­er­a­tion to zero waste and clean energy.

Since June 2017, Bal­ti­more City Coun­cil passed four unan­i­mous res­o­lu­tions call­ing for a tran­si­tion from incin­er­a­tion to zero waste. On Novem­ber 19th, 2018, Bal­ti­more City Coun­cil intro­duced our Bal­ti­more Clean Air Act, and on Jan­u­ary 30th, the Land Use and Trans­porta­tion Com­mit­tee unan­i­mous­ly approved it with a 7–0 vote! It passed City Coun­cil unan­i­mous­ly on Feb. 11th, 2019 and, as of the may­or’s sign­ing on March 7th, is now law.

This new law will force the city’s largest air pol­luter (the Whee­labra­tor Bal­ti­more trash incin­er­a­tor) and the nation’s largest med­ical waste incin­er­a­tor (Cur­tis Bay Ener­gy) to abide by the nation’s strictest stan­dards or shut down.

Whee­labra­tor Bal­ti­more burns up to 2,250 tons of trash per day and is the largest air pol­luter in (heav­i­ly indus­tri­al­ized) Bal­ti­more by far, respon­si­ble for 36% of the city’s indus­tri­al air pol­lu­tion. Cur­tis Bay Ener­gy burns about 70 tons of med­ical waste per day, import­ing med­ical waste from 20 states plus DC and Cana­da! It’s one of a small num­ber of med­ical waste incin­er­a­tors remain­ing in the nation, since over 6,000 closed in the U.S. as hos­pi­tals have moved toward cheap­er and safer non-burn alternatives.

The Bal­ti­more Clean Air Act requires that these incin­er­a­tors meet the most pro­tec­tive stan­dards in North Amer­i­ca for nitro­gen oxide (NOx), sul­fur diox­ide (SO2), mer­cury and diox­in pol­lu­tion from incin­er­a­tors. It also requires that they con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor 20 dif­fer­ent air pol­lu­tants and release the data on this pol­lu­tion real-time to a pub­lic website.

On April 30th, 2019, Whee­labra­tor, Cur­tis Bay Ener­gy, and two waste indus­try trade asso­ci­a­tions sued Bal­ti­more City to stop the law, using legal argu­ments that the city’s Law Depart­ment pre­vi­ous­ly described as “demon­stra­tive­ly false.” They claim that the city doesn’t have the author­i­ty to pass such a law, even though fed­er­al and state law clear­ly per­mit it. The city’s case is strong, and we look for­ward to a pos­i­tive court prece­dent in ear­ly 2020! Check out the fil­ings in the law­suit, includ­ing our advice to the court. In late Jan­u­ary 2020, the City agreed to pause imple­men­ta­tion of the law, which was to take effect in Sep­tem­ber 2020, pend­ing the out­come of the lawsuit.

Find more info about the Act at www.cleanairbmore.org/cleanairact.

If you’re in Bal­ti­more and have noticed Whee­labra­tor’s many des­per­ate mail­ings oppos­ing the Clean Air Act, please see our respons­es here.

We encour­age oth­er com­mu­ni­ties to fol­low Bal­ti­more’s lead and work with us to devel­op local ordi­nances to hold pol­luters account­able (and pre­vent new ones) in your town. Check out our resources on stop­ping pol­luters with local ordi­nances, and be in touch!

New Hamp­shire leg­is­la­tors will be vot­ing on Sep­tem­ber 13, 2018 on whether to over­ride the gov­er­nor’s veto of SB365, a bill that would pro­vide $68 mil­lion in sub­si­dies to sev­en of the state’s 13 largest indus­tri­al air pol­luters: the trash incin­er­a­tor in Con­cord, and six tree-burn­ing “bio­mass” incin­er­a­tors. This would raise the rates of Ever­source and Uni­til cus­tomers by at an esti­mat­ed $60–75/year (and pos­si­bly as much as $120/year), accord­ing to state agen­cies. There is no clean ener­gy in this bill — only dirty ener­gy sub­si­dies. Please help stop us SB 365, by tak­ing action below.

See our new fact­sheet: The Dou­ble Cost of Bio­mass Incin­er­a­tion — fact­sheet on how New Hamp­shire Sen­ate Bill 365 would sub­si­dize sev­en uneco­nom­i­cal bio­mass and trash incin­er­a­tors in the state, hit­ting our health AND pocketbooks.

Incin­er­a­tors are the biggest pol­luters in near­ly half of New Hamp­shire’s counties:

Sen­ate Bill 365 would force Uni­til and Ever­source cus­tomers to pay about $60 more per year accord­ing to the bil­l’s own analy­sis by the NH Pub­lic Util­i­ty Com­mis­sion. See pages 6–8 here. The state’s Office of Con­sumer Advo­cate has indi­cat­ed it could be as much as twice that amount.

This is to pro­tect sev­en uneco­nom­i­cal incin­er­a­tors, six that burn trees, and one in Con­cord that burns trash, feed­ing many mil­lions per year to these com­pa­nies. These facil­i­ties are among the state’s 13 largest air pol­luters. Spread through­out half of the state’s coun­ties, most are the largest air pol­luters in their coun­ties, by far. See the fact­sheet for details.

TAKE ACTION!

Groups oppos­ing SB 365:

• Action Col­lab­o­ra­tive for Tran­si­tion to Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Now (ACTS Now) 
• Ener­gy Jus­tice Network 
• Part­ner­ship for Pol­i­cy Integrity 
• Sea­coast Anti-Pol­lu­tion League 
• Sier­ra Club — NH Chapter 
• Tox­i­cs Action Cen­ter Campaigns 
• Work­ing on Waste 

For more back­ground on trash and bio­mass incin­er­a­tion, see this recent arti­cle sum­ma­riz­ing bio­mass health impacts on work­ers and com­mu­ni­ties, our Woody Bio­mass Fact­sheet, our bio­mass page and our trash incin­er­a­tion page.

Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut is home to an aging and very pol­lut­ing trash incin­er­a­tor that the state would like to close. This state-run incin­er­a­tor serves 70 Con­necti­cut towns and is the coun­ty’s sec­ond largest air pol­luter. Shut­ting it down is a great idea, but…

Con­necti­cut’s Depart­ment of Ener­gy and Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion (DEEP) only con­sid­ered three pro­pos­als to replace the incin­er­a­tor — all of which involved more incineration!

Click to take action!

In 2012, a group of ele­men­tary school stu­dents start­ed a Cray­ola: Make Your Mark! peti­tion call­ing for Cray­ola to “make sure these mark­ers don’t end up in our land­fills, incin­er­a­tors and oceans.”  The peti­tion gath­ered over 90,000 peti­tion sign­ers.  In 2013, Cray­ola launched their Col­or­Cy­cle pro­gram, but won’t admit that the stu­dent cam­paign was the cat­a­lyst for this program.

Cray­ola ini­tial­ly sent these mark­ers to JBI’s “plas­tics to oil” facil­i­ty in Nia­gara, New York.  This exper­i­men­tal oper­a­tion closed down in Decem­ber 2013 and remains idle, with the com­pa­ny claim­ing finan­cial rea­sons (as have sim­i­lar com­pa­nies try­ing this failed plas­tics pyrol­y­sis technology).

Cray­ola admits that its whole mark­ers are not recy­clable.  They refuse to dis­close which com­pa­nies or facil­i­ties are pro­cess­ing the mark­ers col­lect­ed in their “Col­or­Cy­cle” pro­gram, but claim that their “Col­or­Cy­cle pro­gram repur­pos­es the entire mark­er and turns it into reusable alter­na­tives such as oil, elec­tric­i­ty and wax.”

Burn­ing is NOT recycling!

Cray­ola admits that their ini­tial plas­tics-to-oil scheme did­n’t work out, yet is still pur­su­ing pol­lut­ing and exper­i­men­tal incin­er­a­tion and pyrol­y­sis schemes in com­mu­ni­ties they refuse to name.

Plas­tics-to-oil tech­nol­o­gy (pyrol­y­sis) is very exper­i­men­tal, with var­i­ous small demon­stra­tion facil­i­ties usu­al­ly fail­ing for tech­ni­cal and/or eco­nom­ic rea­sons, as JBI did.  Pyrol­y­sis is sim­i­lar to incin­er­a­tion in that it’s expen­sive and pol­lut­ing, destroy­ing mate­ri­als, releas­ing tox­ins and waste prod­ucts, and cre­at­ing new tox­ic chem­i­cals in the process.

Cray­ola also indi­cates that they’re send­ing “Col­or­Cy­cled” mark­ers to be burned in trash incin­er­a­tors.  They state that they’re using them to “gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty in the Unit­ed States” and refer to “Ener­gy from Waste plants,” pre­tend­ing that they “are a clean, reli­able, and renew­able source of ener­gy that pro­duces elec­tric­i­ty with lit­tle envi­ron­men­tal impact.”  This can only describe trash incin­er­a­tors, most of which have rebrand­ed them­selves as “waste to ener­gy” or “ener­gy from waste” facilities.

In fact, trash incin­er­a­tors are the most expen­sive and pol­lut­ing way to man­age waste or to make ener­gy — dirt­i­er than coal pow­er plants, and dirt­i­er than land­fills.  They turn waste into tox­ic ash (which goes to land­fills, any­way) and tox­ic air pol­lu­tion.  They release pol­lu­tants like nitro­gen oxides, lead, mer­cury, and diox­in that con­tribute to ADHD, asth­ma, birth defects, can­cer, learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties, reduced IQ, vio­lent behav­ior and many oth­er health prob­lems.  This is not what a com­pa­ny should be doing if they “believe every child should have a healthy plan­et for their cre­ative todays and tomor­rows” as they claim.

In fact, the ele­men­tary school stu­dents who ini­tial­ly demand­ed mark­er recy­cling from Cray­ola specif­i­cal­ly called for “Cray­ola to make sure these mark­ers don’t end up in our land­fills, incin­er­a­tors and oceans.”

It’s time for Cray­ola to come clean.  Please sign this peti­tion demand­ing that Crayola:

• be trans­par­ent about the spe­cif­ic facil­i­ties and process­es where their Col­or­Cy­cled mark­ers are going,
• imme­di­ate­ly stop sup­port­ing trash incin­er­a­tors and incin­er­a­tor-like pyrol­y­sis schemes,
• redesign their mark­ers so that they’re refill­able and 100% recy­clable, and
• actu­al­ly recy­cle the mark­ers they collect.

Please email or call Mike at 215–436-9511 with any questions.