On March 17 the permit for the 4,000 ton per day garbage incinerator planned for the Curtis Bay-Brooklyn Park-Hawkins Point area of south Baltimore, MD, was declared invalid by the Maryland Department of Energy and Environment, finally ending years of protest by local residents and their allies from all parts of the city and region (see … Read More
For the past 40 years organized citizens and small businesses have successfully defeated proposed incinerators in over 400 cities and counties in the US. Each confrontation was unique even as they shared common elements: Opponents of garbage incineration used facts against the administration’s public relations, focused at the local level where elected officials are most vulnerable … Read More
International Zero Waste Activist Paul Connett hand delivers a copy of his book, “The Zero Waste Solution: One Community at a Time” (Chelsea Publishing, White City Junction, VT), to Pope Francis at the Vatican. The Pope’s message in his encyclical “Laudato si” also calls for responsible management of the earth’s natural resources. ILSR’s Brenda Platt and … Read More
Destiny Watford of the Curtis Bay community in Baltimore, MD, just became the second anti-garbage incinerator activist to win The Goldman Environmental Prize, a prestigious award given annually to one leader from each continent. Rossano Ercolini, a school teacher from the town of Capannori in Tuscany, Italy, won the prize for Europe in 2013 for his efforts … Read More
The best way to defeat proposed incinerators has proven itself once again: community organizing. The Maryland State Department of the Environment pulled the permit on the proposed 4,000 ton per day incinerator to be built in the long suffering industrial communities of Curtis Bay-Brooklyn on the Fairfield Peninsula in south Baltimore. Curtis Bay and Brooklyn are … Read More
The Reuse People of America (TRP), the national non-profit network of building deconstruction enterprises that operate as joint ventures with both for profit and nonprofit companies now serving 21 cities in 15 states, just got bigger. New England Reuse, CEO Chris King and Ted Reiff, president of TRP, worked together to initiate an environmentally responsible green … Read More
Scarborough, is a district within the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada with a population of 625,000 people. Recently, one thousand residents of Mayfair on the Green condominium reacted to skyrocketing fees for waste management. A multi-pronged waste diversion campaign was implemented. They turned the garbage chute into an organics collector, tapped city educational tools including multilingual … Read More
Introduction In the past several months, journalists in major publications such as Forbes, the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, the New York Times and Mother Jones have concluded that recycling rates have stagnated. They tend to blame the recent downturn in materials prices. They’re half right. Recycling levels have stagnated in many cities and towns, largely … Read More
No big surprise here! A survey of mills indicates that quality of one-bin materials are inferior. In North America, a survey of mills’ recovered paper buyers regarding their ability to successfully use the recyclables sorted from ‘one-bin’ collection programs clearly shows that the recycling of paper is ‘significantly diminished both in quality and quantity’ in communities … Read More
