Ninety-Two Organizations Call on the NYS Climate Action Council to Close Waste Incinerators and Tackle Plastics in Climate Plan
For immediate release: July 1, 2022
Contacts:
Alexis Goldsmith, 260-444-1341, alexisgoldsmith@bennington.edu
Judith Enck, 518-605-1770, judithenck@bennington.edu
Beyond Plastics and 91 New York state and national organizations submitted extensive written comments to the New York Climate Action Council detailing the ways the Hochul-Delgado Administration must change the way it deals with solid waste, particularly plastics, in its Scoping Plan for the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. The groups call on the Council to close the state’s ten garbage incinerators, prohibit the burning of plastic through so-called “chemical recycling” and prioritize eliminating single-use plastics. The groups also support expanding the state’s 40-year-old container deposit law (a.k.a. Bottle Bill) to cover more beverage containers.
The organizations include the League of Women Voters of New York State, NYPIRG, Food & Water Watch, 350NYC, Mothers Out Front and Church Women United in New York State.
“Waste issues are climate change issues and waste issues are environmental justice issues. Just as we have greenhouse gas reduction requirements, we need waste reduction requirements - particularly for single-use plastics. If the Climate Action Council and other governmental bodies do not enact waste reduction mandates, the plastic industry is on track to surpass the coal industry’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in the U.S.,” said Judith Enck, President of Beyond Plastics, a national nonprofit dedicated to ending plastic pollution, and former U.S. EPA Region 2 Administrator.
Waste incinerators undermine clean energy and waste reduction efforts, because they compete with recyclable materials for feedstock. Cement kilns have also worked to allow waste burning as a way for them to make more money. New York is currently tied with Florida for the highest number of garbage incinerators per state in the country. Burning waste should be removed from the solid waste hierarchy and prohibited from any definition of “clean energy” because “energy recovery” from burning trash emits nearly four times as many greenhouse gases (GHG) as the grid average. A 2021 report from Beyond Plastics titled The New Coal: Plastics and Climate Change estimates that waste incineration in the U.S. emits approximately 15 million tons of CO2e1 each year, the equivalent of burning 16.5 billion pounds of coal. If the operational period of U.S. incinerators is extended another twenty years, they will emit an excess of 703 million tons of CO2e, the same GHG emissions as 40 coal-fired power plants2.
Trash incinerators also release nitrogen oxide (NOx) and sulfur dioxide (SO2), which are problem pollutants. Burning waste has never been an environmentally sound practice; it merely transforms waste into air and climate pollution without eliminating the need for landfills because of the massive amount of toxic ash that is generated by the burning. The Council should recommend the closure of New York’s ten operating incinerators.
“The scoping plan should explicitly call for the closure of incinerators in New York State and prohibit waste burning as a fuel for industrial facilities. Garbage incinerators release more carbon and 14 times as much mercury as coal-fired power plants, as well as particulates that contribute to chronic diseases such as stroke, pulmonary disease, and cancer. This is anathema to the community protection that’s meant to be a pillar of the state’s climate law,” said Alexis Goldsmith, Organizing Director at Beyond Plastics.
“Incinerators are poisoning New York communities where they exist. This directly conflicts with New Yorkers' constitutional right to clean air and water. These incinerators are a detriment to health, with pollutants specifically known to cause progressive, disabling, and sometimes fatal diseases,” said Alÿcia Bacon, NY Organizer for Mothers Out Front.
Plastics, in particular, have thousands of chemicals added to them in the production process, which are ultimately transferred to our air, water, and soil when they are burned. Burning plastics with paper generates dioxin, the same toxin found in Agent Orange. Dioxin does not readily degrade in the environment and remains toxic for a long period of time; exposure to dioxin shortens life expectancy and can cause debilitating birth defects. Incinerators are almost always located in communities of color and/or low-income communities where residents suffer the negative health impacts of prolonged exposure to these toxins - a significant environmental justice problem.
The groups also call for a ban on plastic burning facilities, promoted as “chemical recycling” or “advanced recycling” which require high energy inputs to turn plastic waste back into low-quality fossil fuels. Like conventional waste burning, the plastic waste made into fuel is not a renewable energy source as it perpetuates the demand for the extraction of fossil fuels to continue producing disposable plastic products. For fenceline communities, the pollution from “chemical recycling” facilities is just as bad, if not worse, than the toxic pollution from conventional incinerators. Expansion of so-called “chemical” and “advanced recycling” has the potential to emit 18 million tons of GHG per year by the year 2025 – equivalent to the climate emissions of nine coal-fired power plants.
Instead of supporting unproven and polluting technological solutions to plastic waste, the organizations call on the Council to prioritize the existing solid waste hierarchy: reduce, reuse, recycle.
“Recycling initiatives are important, but New York has lost sight of the solid waste hierarchy and focused too much on managing waste by burning, exporting, or landfilling, rather than preventing it. Twelve years ago, the Department of Environmental Conservation called for Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging to reduce municipal waste but it lacked the strong directives needed to make that recommendation a reality,” said Enck.
The remedy, says Beyond Plastics, is for the Council to include those directives in the scoping plan. A bill introduced in 2022 by NYS Assemblymember Steve Englebright (A10185) could become the nation’s strongest Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) law for packaging. The bill would require a 50% reduction in single-use packaging within ten years, and 90% of remaining packaging must be made of recycled content or effectively recyclable within the following 12 years. Producers can switch to reuse and refill systems in order to meet these requirements. The bill also requires producers to eliminate a host of toxic chemicals from packaging. This is the type of public policy the Council should embrace and make explicit in the climate action plan.
According to the U.S. E.P.A, packaging, alone, makes up 28% of municipal solid waste. Plastic packaging has proliferated since 2000, with nearly half of all new plastic destined to become single-use packaging, to the detriment of our climate, air quality, oceans, public health, and biodiversity. Meanwhile, the plastic recycling rate hovers below 6% in the United States and it’s increasingly clear that we can’t recycle our way out of our plastic waste problem.
“Petroleum-based plastics are polluting our communities as they fill up landfills and are burned in incinerators. Phasing out plastics is a priority action the State must take to address the climate crisis with the enactment of an effective Extended Producer Responsibility policy and expanded bottle deposit law,” said Anne Rabe, Environmental Policy Director for NYPIRG.
You can view the organizations’ comments on the Draft Scoping Plan at: https://beyondplastics.squarespace.com/s/Comments-on-the-Draft-Scoping-Plan-for-the-NYS-CLCPA_7-1-22.pdf
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