Healthy Environments

There’s no doubt about it; the waste industry is relentless. When a company peddling a false solution sets its sights on a particular community – often a historically marginalized community – it is ready to spend big to get what it wants. Waste companies invest huge sums to convince government officials and the public that their facilities are safe and even beneficial for communities. And they hire expensive consultants and lawyers to help them navigate local, state, and federal permitting processes.

But that doesn’t mean communities are powerless to fight back. Many of the local, state, and federal permitting processes for polluting waste facilities incorporate opportunities for the public to be heard. Before a new incinerator is built, or an existing landfill expanded, a waste company will likely need to notify the public and hold informational meetings. And before the government approves its plans, it often must create a process for the public to submit written comments or to request a public hearing. Each of these presents an opportunity for the community to point out shortcomings in the company’s plan, to demand additional protections, or to make a case for why the facility should not be built or expanded in the first place.

Many dangerous proposals have been defeated because the community demanded better and refused to give in. The process can be overwhelming, and it might seem like an unfair, uphill battle. But that’s why Just Zero is here to help.

Just Zero works side by side with communities across the United States to envision, draft, and support policies – including local ordinances and state laws – that protect communities from toxic and climate-damaging impacts of false solutions like landfills, incinerators, and spreading sewage sludge. Ultimately, there is no better way to protect your community from a toxic practice than by passing a law that bans that practice.

Cities and states throughout the country have taken exactly this approach, imposing statewide bans on the spread of sewage sludge or zoning ordinances that prohibit waste-burning facilities. Others have passed laws that close loopholes that make it easier to operate toxic facilities or restrict the locations where dangerous incinerators or landfills can be built.

Programs and policies at the local, state, and federal level that reduce waste and bolster recycling and composting are an essential part of our work at Just Zero. Helping communities design real solutions to the waste crisis is what we’re all about. But demanding an end to toxic false solutions is equally important. In with the good, out with the bad.

Knowledge is power. It may sound cliché, but it’s true. The waste industry so often gets what it wants because it spreads myths, greenwashing, and other misinformation to make toxic false solutions appear far less dangerous than they are. To protect our communities from landfills, incinerators, and sewage sludge, we can start by taking this misinformation head on. By busting myths, exposing lies, and promoting truth.

The right facts are the most important tool in any campaign to build healthy environments for all communities. When a landfill claims to be a good neighbor, we can push back with information about climate damage, toxic leachate, and environmental injustice. When the waste industry touts supposed benefits of trash incineration, we’ve got facts about asthma, lead poisoning, PFAS, and toxic ash. And when corporate polluters claim that sewage sludge is healthy “fertilizer,” we can point to the toxic legacy that comes with spreading industrial waste on our country’s farmland.

As you work to protect your environment, Just Zero is here to help you expose the toxic lies that fuel the waste industry’s attacks on your community.

Individual choices and actions can only get us so far when we’re facing a pervasive and systemic waste problem. Right now, the status quo of “make, bury, burn,” is threatening our health and the environment. We have better, less expensive, less dangerous options that don’t damage our climate or poison our environment. The good news is that many states, counties, and cities take a holistic approach to the waste they produce and how it’s managed using Solid Waste Management Plans.

The bad news is that these plans often take a lackluster, business-as-usual approach to waste planning that is rooted in toxic and climate-damaging landfills and incinerators, which have plagued communities and our planet for decades.

Solid Waste Management Plans can and should be an effective tool to completely re-evaluate and rework a community’s relationship with waste. These plans can provide the groundwork for programs that eliminate waste, invest in real Zero Waste systems, create jobs, and protect the environment.

Just Zero works with communities across the country to help ensure that Solid Waste Management Plans are setting us on a path to Zero Waste. We help educate communities about where their trash is going and the impact this can have on public health and the environment. We connect people who are striving to implement toxic-free and sustainable Zero Waste systems. And we weigh in on Solid Waste Plans to ensure they’re focused on solutions, not perpetuating environmental injustices.