Stop Trashing Our Air: alternatives to trash incineration

Image above used under license from Daniel Beckemeier stock.adobe.com.

Last week, the City Council met to discuss alternatives to trash incineration. Councilmember Jamie Gauthier has been working to halt trash incineration entirely with the Stop Trashing Our Air Act.

If passed, it would ban Philadelphia from burning any collected trash. Currently, 40% of Philadelphia’s trash is burned in Chester at Reworld Delaware Valley, contributing to what residents have been calling environmental racism.

According to the World Bank Group, 20% of global municipal waste is treated by incineration, which releases tons of carbon dioxide into the air.

The city of Philadelphia and its residents may have other options when it comes to trash.

Composting

Bennett Compost is one of the largest privately run composting companies in Philadelphia. They offer subscription-based composting, where they drop off a bucket to their customer’s house, picking it up weekly, and reselling the soil produced from the waste.

According to owner Tom Bennett, they have kept two million pounds of food waste out of landfills in the past three months alone. Bennett says that when he first started, his priority was to compost, but not at the expense of his neighbors.

“If I wouldn’t want to be the nearest neighbor to this facility then we’re not doing it right,” said Bennett.

Bennett says this rule applied even when he was composting part-time, collecting food from neighbors, and partnering with a nearby community garden. But the hardest part of composting is finding a place to do it.

“There’s some states that have more sophisticated regulatory infrastructures on composting facilities, and Pennsylvania does not,” said Bennett. “Pennsylvania is not as sophisticated as Vermont or Maryland so that creates some challenges when siting and building facilities.”

Pennsylvania currently has a permit-by-rule system, which means that as long as operators do not break the outlined rules, they can operate. Maryland, by contrast, uses a tiered system that considers how much compost is produced at each operation.

Bennett says another issue with composting is education.

“It’s like magic,” said Bennett. “You take something you don’t want anymore, once a week you put it outside your house and it disappears and in some ways that’s magic. You’re not exposed to the downstream effects and all that. In terms of just getting rid of stuff it works really well most of the time. And so showing people there’s more to it. It doesn’t go away, it just goes somewhere else.”

Bennett Compost collects compost from every zip code in Philadelphia. But Bennett realizes that because they charge for their services, most people in certain neighborhoods can participate only because they have extra income to spend.

However, Bennett says that when his company has removed the financial barrier and run test pilots, most people are interested.

“Even residents who don’t speak English are like, ‘I get it, how do I do it?’” said Bennett.

Bennett thought that eventually the public would catch on and composting would become a normal way of life, but after 17 years, his business has grown exponentially.

Philadelphia’s Parks and Recreation Department also launched a community-led composting network  under their Farm Philly Organization. Starting in 2019, the network was inspired by a similar program in Washington, D.C.

Once a space becomes a composting site, the Parks and Recreation Department provides a three-bin composting system, thermometers, shovels, sifters, and a wheelbarrow for free. There is also a manual on the Farm Philly website that guides community members through the history of composting in Philadelphia and how to compost.

The city composting network started with 13 community composting sites and has grown to 21.

Recycling / Non-Recyclable and Non-Compostable

In Philadelphia, there are also organizations focused on the future of materials that cannot be easily recycled or composted. PAR Recycle Works is an organization that hires formerly incarcerated individuals to recycle items like computer towers, monitors, and servers.

“We have a slogan here where we say one tower saves one life,” said Warehouse Manager, Neil Ryant.

PAR contacts universities, K-12 schools, and community members to collect e-waste. Once at their warehouse, they log what they have received.

They then take these electronics to the deconstruction room, where they strip them of their motherboards, power supplies, and copper and aluminum wires. These materials are then sent to a downstream vendor that pays them for the materials.

PAR Recycle Works also hosts events on weekends where they pick up e-waste, sometimes requiring them to leave the city.

Circular Philadelphia is a nonprofit promoting the concept of a circular economy – an ecosystem that minimizes waste and promotes reuse – in Philadelphia.

Executive Director Candice Lawson says the idea of a circular economy can seem difficult to understand or overly academic, but it has existed in Philadelphia long before Circular Philadelphia was established.

“We had to understand what Philadelphia actually needed and who was already doing the work,” wrote Lawson in an email to Generocity. “Neighbors repairing appliances, small businesses finding creative uses for each other’s byproduct, community organizations fighting illegal dumping on their block.”

Circular Philadelphia also operates resourcePhilly, a “living map” that connects Philadelphia residents to places where they can donate, reuse, repair, recycle, borrow, and buy secondhand items. Lawson says their next step is to translate the website to make it more accessible.

“We built it because we kept hearing the same thing: people want to do the right thing with their stuff, they just don’t know where to go,” wrote Lawson.

During the city council meeting last week, Councilmember Gauthier highlighted that the city’s contract with Reworld is ending on June 30th. Carlton Williams, director of Clean and Green Initiatives, stated that the city has already requested an extension of six months to one year on the existing contract to give council time to consider.

However, city council members appeared to be surprised of this.

Currently, the city is still reviewing alternatives to trash incineration, but there is still a possibility that the contract with Reworld will be renewed.

If renewed, trash would continue to be incinerated in Chester for another seven years.

“Toxic air does not stop at the county line. Philadelphians are getting sick because of the City of Philadelphia’s decision to burn trash in Chester. In the 1980s, the City of Philadelphia banned trash incinerators within city limits because they were deemed too dangerous. If something is not safe for Philly, it is not safe for Chester,” said Gauthier.