[00:00:18] Speaker A: Welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host, Lonnie.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: And I'm your other co host, Jaronous.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: And today we're continuing our wrong direction mini series, and we're building on our conversation last time about biogas.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: That's right. We'll be talking about waste incineration, which also falls into this bucket of quote unquote waste to energy technologies with the help of not one, but two guests.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Yep. And we'll be joined by Chris Tendazzo from New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, Jessica Roth from Global alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, or Gaia. But before we get into that, Jaron, can you give us our mission?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: I sure can. WEAC's mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Thank you for that. But before we dive into waste incineration, it's worth adding some more context while also sprinkling a little bit of WEACs history. Right. So here in northern Manhattan is the North river sewage treatment facility, which became a major focus of the lawsuit in 1992 after it was completed due to the environmental justice concerns. That lawsuit was successful and led to some major upgrades that reduced its burden on the community and led to the formation of we act.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: You can get the full history of that story by listening to our holiday special from last year, which we titled a weak story.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: All that to say, addressing environmental justice concerns from waste facilities is at the core of WEAC's existence.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Fast forward to today, and the North river sewage treatment plan is still there, processing wastewater from all of northern Manhattan with significantly less pollution, of course. But what happens to all of our trash? Like, the stuff we don't flush down the toilet?
[00:02:14] Speaker A: Well, that's where waste incinerator come in. Most of Manhattan's solid waste actually ends up in waste incinerators, which means, just like it sounds, it just gets burned.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Yeah. There are no more waste incinerators in New York City, correct. That's a good thing, right?
[00:02:31] Speaker A: True. But the problem is, most of Manhattan's waste is sent to incinerator's upstate New York, New Jersey, and or Pennsylvania. And these areas are classified as disadvantaged communities or environmental justice communities with higher concentration of low income residents. And New York City spends about half a billion dollars every year just shipping its waste.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Wow. So you may be asking yourself, why are they talking about this now? I get it. It's an environmental justice issue. But what does it have to do with energy?
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Well, like we mentioned earlier, waste incineration falls in the bucket of waste to energy technologies that are being framed as environmentally beneficial by various industries and invested in by the federal government. Sounds familiar, right?
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's because when that waste is incinerated, the heat that's produced is used to generate steam and move a turbine to create energy, similar to some of the other forms of energy production that we've talked about that use combustion.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: So why are these facilities bad and harmful for environmental justice communities?
[00:03:34] Speaker B: That's a great question, Lani. We're actually going to answer that with the help of our two guests. So let's go ahead and jump into our interview.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Let's do it.
[00:03:51] Speaker C: Hi, thank you for having me and us in this episode and excited to share our perspectives and stories with y'all. My name is Chris Tendasso. I use Dave and pronouns. I'm the statewide eg organizer with the New Jersey Environmental Justice alliance. And the work that I do is I support different EJ groups and communities throughout the states and their organizing efforts and their local EJ fights, whether that is with policy resources, organizing resources, trainings, educations, speaking engagements, anything that's necessarily about supporting them in their work. The way that we function is that we don't necessarily bring prescribed solutions to community folks. We go and listen to what the needs are and bring our support based on what those needs are. And we do this throughout the state. We're the only statewide ag organization in New Jersey. And yeah, we do this work to support the people.
[00:04:52] Speaker D: Hi, thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to be able to speak with you all and to have this conversation with Chris, which is a conversation we've had parts of many times in many places. My name is Jessica Roth. I use she her pronouns. I work for Gaia, which is the global alliance for incinerator Alternatives. And I am the Plastics and Petrochemicals program manager for the US Canada program. And I was really brought on to fight the plastics industry that my organization is global in nature. There's small member organizations all across the world, and we're working towards real environmental justice and sustainable path forward and stopping incineration and burning and all the dangerous ways of dealing with waste. But because the plastics industry has just been in this boom lately, there has been so much focus on how do we keep using plastics from the industry. And so I was hired to help work against that. And my job is really, I do everything from supporting site fights against individual facilities the way up to discussions with the White House, Senate, Congress, doing legislative policy work at the state and at the federal level. And I'm also involved in the global plastics treaty negotiations.
I'm excited to be here.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Thank you. I feel like you're both capturing very important pieces of the work. And Chris, I appreciate your perspective of not coming with already baked solutions, working with community members. And I feel like that's part of the work. It's all collaborative. Right. And even this conversation. So thank you for being here.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: We couldn't have two better guests to talk about our topic today. We're talking a lot about waste incineration. So what we'd like to do is if can you guys just give us kind of a brief introduction on how waste incineration works and a little bit of that history of waste incineration in the US.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: Definitely, to put it in simple terms, waste incineration, or incineration is just burning trash. There is no other way around it. Folks like to use fancy words to describe this. Processes waste to energy. It's another term that it usually goes around. But the simplest way of putting it, it's just burning trash for either to generate some sort of electricity or some sort of fuel. And we definitely, at NJA and within EJ spaces overall, we see this as a false solution, because we don't really think that we should depend on waste as a resource to generate energy. And also, the way in which the waste is being burned is not burning in isolated spaces. It's actually, these facilities are usually sited within environments of just communities, low wealth communities, communities whose main language is not English, and folks that are politically disadvantaged and don't have the resources, political resources, to actually fight these things off of their neighborhoods. And so it's a very unhealthy practice of generating electricity. And it's not really a solution to the waste problem, because the waste problem is about wanting to reduce the waste, not finding ways to. How do we handle, like, the current cycles of waste that are happening? We need to reduce that. And a lot of the practices around waste, around incineration, do have a lot to do with the political landscape of the areas and how different municipalities handle their waste contracts with different entities and corporations.
[00:08:33] Speaker D: Yeah, so, like Chris was saying, obviously, there's a huge problem with these facilities, where they're being built and who they're affecting. We've been doing, we've been using incineration in the United States States here since 1885. That was the first incinerator in the United States, and it was in New York to address governors Island's army posts waste. But then there was like this massive expansion over the course of the next handful of decades. I've actually been just looking into a lot of this because I'm helping with a specific site fight against a waste to energy facility, which we'll get into a little bit more later. But it turns out that between 1885 and 1908, there were 180 give or take waste incinerators constructed across the United States. But by 1930, there were more than 700. So you can see this is something that industry grabbed onto, governments grabbed onto, and just kind of ran with it. But the really interesting thing was that up until the sixties, there was almost no plastic in any of the waste that was being burned. So from the sixties forward is really when we've been dealing with these exponentially worse impacts that Chris was talking about, right? So because it's plastic, everything from the beginning, from the second that it's extracted from the earth to the final resting place for whatever remnants of ash are, there is a toxic polluting process. And as Chris was noting, too, most often all of those steps of this process are located in lower wealth, lower invested, predominantly black, indigenous brown communities of color and places where there's not investment in safety and security and clean resources. And so we've really been dealing with this sort of toxic dumping in all these different ways. Whether it's the actual physical ash or the emissions. There's, like, massive toxins that are being emitted, most of which have incredibly dangerous impacts on human health, whether it's cancers or endocrine disruption or fertility, impotence, low birth weight, premature births, respiratory, cardiac, all kinds of pulmonary problems. They're all caused by these elements that are found in what's being burned. And they're also compounded by being burned, because now there's all of this toxic material that's interspersed with everything else. So even if it's burning things, that would be slightly less problematic, like organic matter, stuff like that, you know, that would still obviously have greenhouse gas impacts, but it would have much fewer polluting impacts and toxic impacts on the communities around them. But we're not in that world anymore, and what we're dealing with are really, really dangerous. And most of them were built in the eighties. And as is the case with most dangerous polluting infrastructure, whether we're talking about pipelines or power plants or incinerator, they'll have about a 30 year life expectancy in which the goal is for them to recoup their losses and make profits. And so it's really a captured resource for 30 ish years where, you know, no one's going to close out a facility because they haven't made all their money back yet. And it's just continuing to become more and more decrepit. And so it's becoming more and more problematic in the emissions that it's releasing into communities as well. So it's a huge issue of finance. It's a huge issue of public health. It's a huge issue for environmental health. Obviously, these toxins are going into our water, our land, the foods that we eat, the animals that we raise, the children that we birth. It's in everywhere, as you've probably all seen. There's tons and tons of material coming out. About the deepest impacts of plastics and microplastics into all the aspects of our lives. And of course, they're massively climate problematic. There's massive greenhouse gas emissions as well, less efficient than any other way of producing energy or of dealing with our waste problem.
[00:12:20] Speaker C: And I will add that from the. I think, like, there's a report. There's a report by the Tishman Environment and Design center on incinerators. Like, I think it's called incinerators and industry and decline. And this .1 of the things that Jessica said, and one of the things that really struck with me from that report, is that 80% of all incinerators in the entire country are all in Asia communities.
So it's not even, like, by, like, randomly citing these things. And these are just randomly cited. No. Like, these are by design, set in places where politically disenfranchised communities are located. And they're taking advantage of that disenfranchisement to make sure that they can be able to push that. Here in New Jersey, we have three of them. And recently, from a report from Tsetse, the teacher Environment and Design center, they pointed out how the incinerators in New Jersey have received over $30 million in subsidies. And these subsidies come from anybody that pays electricity in New Jersey. So it's wild to me that the communities are being polluted by these industries are the ones that are subsidizing their lifespans for over expended periods of time, even beyond the point where there are supposed to be stopped working. And then incinerator companies, they know that, right? And Covanta greenwashed themselves as a reworld up in the last year or so. And their goal is to make themselves seem as if they're a good neighbor and like a healthy neighbor for communities, when in reality, it's a complete opposite and so I think it's really important to remember how communities should not be extorted for benefits or anything. Like, people should just get clean energy, period.
[00:14:12] Speaker D: Another thing that's also important to recognize is that most of these communities are already disproportionately impacted by a bad and dangerous infrastructure. And part of that is a self perpetuating prophecy, because once an area is polluted or toxic or brownfield or whatever, then they just always want to build more things there. And of course, the people with more resources, the people with more access to power, fight to keep it out of their areas, right? So, like one of the, you know, connectivity issues here, like, I live in so called Brooklyn, right, which occupied Canarsie, Lenape lands in New York City, and Chris is in New Jersey, and we send most of our waste to New Jersey. Like it's a completely different state, but they've got all those things built there. And the incinerators here, you know, have lived their life, and nobody wants new incinerators, and especially not people with any kind of power or privilege. And so it's this perpetuating system that always brings the worst things down on the people who are already suffering the most and who have made the least contribution to the problem, right? Like, there's so much less. They're not the ones creating the plastics. They're not the ones who are making the mass amounts of waste that's coming from all the big cities and everywhere else. And then just to the point about the renewable energy situation, right? Like, that's a huge problem now, especially because of the IRA and the fact that there's so many more federal subsidies, tax credits, things that are available to industry. So they're digging in on renewable energy, right? Like all of their quote unquote solutions are sort of mimicking the things that we're saying in the movement and people who are fighting for their communities and pretending that what they're offering us are also solutions, when in fact, like, burning waste is the least efficient way to get energy of all of the options. It is less efficient as far as investments and the amount of money that has to be spent to avoid emissions, which still don't avoid emissions. So then there's like the external cost of that, as well as greenhouse gas emissions and all of that going in makes them less efficient than even nuclear or coal or natural gas power plants. And so it's just. It's this, you know, bait and switch, too, where they're like, this is the thing that we're doing and what we want to do, but you want to call it this other thing so that it sounds better and it gets us more money and it gets us government subsidies or looking the other way or whatever it is. And again, it's like this self perpetuating prophecy where, you know, once they fit themselves into these little government cubicles or whatever, in order to, you know, take advantage of government programs, then it's really hard to get them out. You know, they're deeply invest, deeply intertwined in the renewable energy portfolio in New York City, I mean, and in New York state. And, you know, and there they get these names and then they woo, you know, legislators or decision makers by saying, look it, we're all, we're doing these great things. What are you talking about? We're going to handle your waste problem. And not only that, we're also going to give you energy, which is not even enough to do to make a difference in any power grid either.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: So much to unpack, all of that. I almost wish this is probably the hardest part about podcasting is like, okay, we have so many good things going that we're to unpack and to talk about, and we only get 30 minutes to do it. How do we do it all? We just need to give you all your own show. We just have a whole spin off when we talk about all this stuff. And it's really like slowly kind of coming together into even just some of the false solutions and things that we've talked about related to waste incineration and biogas and other things in that space of waste to energy, false solutions. It's its own subcategory within this larger discussion that we're having about false solutions, the wrong direction of the federal energy investments. And just one thing that really jumped out to me that we talked a little bit about in our last episode about biogas, is what you mentioned about these green energy credits. And they're really one of the main ways that these operations are even able to exist. One of the things that came out that was frustrating about the biogas, and I imagine this may be true for the waste incineration as well, is that those credits were going in to help, basically allowed the company to generate more money, but that wasn't even bringing a benefit to the community in terms of lower utility, lower energy costs, lower utility costs. It's like, so what's the benefit there? And just one quick reminder. IRA Inflation Reduction Act. I know sometimes we get used to it. We say it so often nowadays. Just a reminder what that is. So just my initial thoughts there Lonnie, I don't know if you had some initial thoughts, too. I was like, so many notes. I was diligently taking notes over here. I'm like, what do I start with? There's so many things here.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, the one thing that, you know, I don't want to rehash anything that Jaron just said or either of you talked about. But one thing that I've noticed is that throughout this kind of, you know, mini series that we've been talking about a lot of these things, we're often talking about kind of new and emerging technologies and how they're not, they're not good for communities, but we're talking about something that's, like, been done since, you know, 18 hundreds of burning waste. And I feel like that has never been good. It's never been a good thing. Like, I think from the start when they did it, they're like, this has bad consequences even before they can even use it for energy. It's just been a bad thing. So it's always, it's fascinating to me that something that has been around for so long that has been consistently a bad thing that no one has ever said this is good in any way, shape or form. And then it's like, let's put more money towards this thing. We know it's bad. We know it's worse than we know that it's not cost effective. It's not giving any type of benefits, the benefits that we really need. So let's not know. Talk about solar and wind or any other type of actually truly renewable, clean, green energy. Let's just keep funding this thing that doesn't work, and it's a detriment to the communities around. I think that's just a fascinating piece there. It's just that same old, same old.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: Well, I know we're almost out of time, and so I want to give you both just one final word in case there's anything you wanted to share that you didn't have a chance to cover.
[00:20:18] Speaker D: Before we wrap up, I'll just say two quick things. One is that it's bigger than a waste management problem because the problem is really upstream. And part of the reason we're in the situation we're in right now is because industry and governments want to deal with stuff after the fact and after they've made their money. And the issue is really about what are we producing, how are we producing it, when are we producing it and how are we using it. And that's why systems like reuse and refill systems are so important is to like make and to be non toxic, right? Not to be based in plastics, which is what industry and a lot of our government is still trying to push for. So I think that, you know, if we're not, you can't talk about the downstream without acknowledging the upstream and figuring out where the problems lie there and going back to the source to stop what's happening. Which also addresses the issue that I know is a little bit beyond this particular podcast. But something we've talked about and that I think is a really important piece to keep, you know, to continue to talk about is around so called chemical recycling that industry has been promoting. Right? Like industry does not want to stop production. They want to keep taking as much fossil fuel out of the ground as they possibly can. And we are moving away from that as we work to decarbonize our systems, whether it's our transportation, our housing, buildings, all of those things are moving away from fossil fuels. So industries get nervous and they need to figure out how to keep us addicted to their product, and that is through plastics. Because for them to produce virgin plastic is so incredibly cheap. And again, for all the reasons we talked about with incineration, right, externalized costs and issues of like regulation and double dipping on funding from the government, like, there's a million reasons why it's such a profitable piece of their equation. But in order to do that, they're, they're, you know, out there telling us that they have these, quote, new solutions like Lonnie was talking about, right? But they're not new, they're old, they don't work. And most of what is being operationalized as what is so called chemical recycling, which is really toxic breakdown of plastics, right? And that's all it is. And it's not creating new plastic, it's not recycling, it's not closed loop, it's not zero waste, it's not circular as industry says it is. It is taking plastics, essentially high heat applications to it, which are, you know, our pyrolysis. Like pyrolysis literally has pyro, it's fire, it's incineration. But industry is trying to make us think it's not incineration. And this is a big pivot that they've made and are investing so much money in, even though they know it is not working. It's not scalable. Even if it were working, the greenhouse gas and emissions impacts would be so vast that we would be. It would be game over. So it's really important to keep alert to, like, what are solutions? And like, we've both been saying, those solutions come out of communities, come out of frontline experience, and not listening to industry when they're peddling some newfangled shiny thing. Like, if it sounds too good to be true, it almost always is.
[00:23:09] Speaker C: Yeah. No chemical recycling leaves. We are currently in a fight here in Jersey preventing chemical recycling from coming in because the industry has found us, and they think that this is like a perfect playground for them to develop. We're actually fighting a bill that's proposing to kind of like, make chemical recycling exempt from the regulatory process of the DEP, which will accept them from the environmental justice law. So, you know, like, they, they know that we're after them. And I think, uh, uh, that's something that, like, you know, I've been thinking about lately is that, you know, like, all this is really, like, bleak in, like, in other way. I don't know, like other term for that. But I do think we have, like, um, there's hope to kind of move away from this and move towards something different. And I'm just saying that because of the failing incident incineration project cohort that we're part of, like, we have partners in California who are about to shut down their last incinerator shout out to California. And they did that by removing the incinerators out of renewable energy portfolio standard program. So for us, like, we, we have also been doing that work to kind of get them removed out of the program for New Jersey. So knowing that that is, you know, like, if we talked about, we've been talking about how they depend heavily on subsidies, so it's basically like, if we take their allowance out of them, they're not gonna do it anymore. And they don't really care that they will stop operating or what they're gonna, what the municipality is gonna do with the trash, they don't care. They're just like, okay, we're just gonna end the contract because we just can't be more like our financially. It's not financially feasible for us to operate. So for me, I think, like, there is a light of hope for us to look forward to, that there are alternatives and solutions to getting rid of these companies for the better, for the communities. And a lot of that will take a lot of organizing, a lot of policy work and moving pieces. And I think it's not like a, it's not going to be like a short term fight. Like they've been fighting incinerator changers for like the last 30 years almost. So I think it's like it's going to be a continued fight of how to highlight the solutions that are happening in communities and, like, the knowledge and expertise that are happening that it's within the communities to really, like, propel forward different systems of waste that would benefit them and not really pollute them. And Covanta, I feel like Covanta is somewhat scared of this because now that they're shutting down, Covanta was also the incinerator in California. Right, Jessica? But I feel like they know that we're like, there are groups that are coming after them. There are communities that are organizing against them to shut them down. And so I think that's why they're even rebranding themselves. You know, like green washing only happens when I feel like they know that they're trying to really hide something away from them. And I feel like they've gained so much national attention from what work that folks here in Jersey have been doing and nationally against them that they came out with like, this rebranding to kind of like, make themselves anew and pretend, like, not aligned themselves with the name that's already sustained. So for us, it's really going to be important to continue to hold them accountable and call them out. You know, you can rebrand yourself as many times as you want. What you have done to the communities, it's already felt, it's already known, and it's not going to be easily forgotten. We're not just going to be like, oh, you changed your name, you're different now.
No, that kind of transition, we're not here for that.
[00:26:43] Speaker D: Only just transitions?
[00:26:45] Speaker C: No, only just transition.
[00:26:47] Speaker D: Washing transitions, yes.
[00:26:49] Speaker C: Just transitions all the way. And that we, I hope that just transition does come from Jersey and I do see it coming. It would just take a lot of organizing and policy efforts to get us to that line and that goal, and.
[00:27:03] Speaker D: That'S why we have to fight together to do that.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: Well, thank you both for those closing thoughts. I appreciate, you know, the extra context, extra clarification and understanding, but also that little bit of hopeful and call to action way to help us wrap up. And I'm definitely going to borrow that only just solutions. That's going to become a tagline for us. I think that's a great, a great motto. But we appreciate you joining us. I wish I had another hour with both of you to continue this conversation. Maybe we'll have another opportunity to continue this conversation later. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to check out the next episode in our wrong direction mini series coming out on October 14. This will be one of the last episodes in the miniseries finally, where we'll be talking with Doctor Nikki Sheetz about cumulative impacts and some groundbreaking laws that are helping to protect environmental justice communities.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: If you liked this episode, make sure to rate and review the show on whatever platform you listen on. If you have thoughts or suggestions on topics you want us to cover, we encourage you to reach out to
[email protected].
[00:28:04] Speaker B: Dot check out weact on Facebook, a C T F O R E J, Instagram X and YouTube at react four EJ. That's we a c t number four, EJ. And check out our website, weact.org, for more information about environmental justice.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: Until next time, bye.
