How Maryland's Trash-Burning Bias Galvanized Activists in Baltimore

"First, they went after a giant proposed incinerator. Now the activists want an existing one shut down, and the law changed."

"Shashawnda Campbell became an environmental activist at 15, when she learned that a company had proposed building the country's largest waste-to-energy incinerator less than a mile from her high school, in the Curtis Bay section of Baltimore.

Waste-to-energy incinerators gained traction in the 1980s, as an environmentally-friendly alternative to throwing trash in landfills by burning it and converting it to energy.

But by some metrics, burning trash can be even dirtier than burning coal, emitting lead, mercury, nitrogen oxides, dioxins and particulate matter associated with increased risk of cardiac and respiratory disease. And the facility first proposed by Energy Answers International in 2009 was designed to incinerate 4,000 tons a day."

Rachel Fritts reports for InsideClimate News August 24, 2020.

Source: InsideClimate News, 08/25/2020