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.
