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‘Moment of reckoning:’ U.S. cities burn recyclables after China bans imports

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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The conscientious citizens of Philadelphia continue to put their pizza boxes, plastic bottles, yogurt containers, and other items into recycling bins.

But in the past three months, half of these recyclables have been loaded onto trucks, taken to a hulking incineration facility, and burned, according to the city’s government.

It’s a situation being replicated across the U.S. as cities struggle to adapt to a recent ban by China on the import of items intended for reuse.

The loss of this overseas dumping ground means that plastics, paper, and glass set aside for recycling by Americans is being stuffed into domestic landfills or is simply burned in vast volumes. This new reality risks an increase of plumes of toxic pollution that threaten the largely black and Latino communities who live near heavy industry and dumping sites in the U.S.

About 200 tons of recycling material is sent to the huge Covanta incinerator in Chester City, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia, every day since China’s import ban came into practice last year, the company says.

“People want to do the right thing by recycling but they have no idea where it goes and who it impacts,” said Zulene Mayfield, who was born and raised in Chester and now spearheads a community group against the incinerator, called Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living.

“People in Chester feel hopeless — all they want is for their kids to get out, escape. Why should we be expendable? Why should this place have to be burdened by people’s trash and shit?”

Some experts worry that burning plastic recycling will create a new fog of dioxins that will worsen an already alarming health situation in Chester. Nearly four in 10 children in the city have asthma, while the rate of ovarian cancer is 64 percent higher than the rest of Pennsylvania and lung cancer rates are 24 percent higher, according to state health statistics.

The dilemma with what to do with items earmarked for recycling is playing out across the U.S. The country generates more than 250 million tons of waste a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, with about a third of this recycled and composted.

Until recently, China had been taking about 40 percent of U.S. paper, plastics, and other recyclables, but this trans-Pacific waste route has now ground to a halt. In July 2017, China told the World Trade Organization it no longer wanted to be the end point for yang laji, or foreign garbage, with the country keen to grapple with its own mountains of waste.

Since January 2018, China hasn’t accepted two dozen different recycling materials, such as plastic and mixed paper, unless they meet strict rules around contamination. The imported recycling has to be clean and unmixed — a standard too hard to meet for most American cities.

It is “virtually impossible to meet the stringent contamination standards established in China,” said a spokesperson for the city of Philadelphia, who added that the cost of recycling has become a “major impact on the city’s budget,” at around $78 a ton. Half of the city’s recycling is now going to the Covanta plant, the spokesperson said.

There isn’t much of a domestic market for U.S. recyclables — materials such as steel or high-density plastics can be sold on but much of the rest holds little more value than rubbish — meaning that local authorities are hurling it into landfills or burning it in huge incinerators like the one in Chester, which already torches around 3,510 tons of trash, the weight equivalent of more than 17 blue whales, every day.

“This is a real moment of reckoning for the U.S. because of a lot of these incinerators are aging, on their last legs, without the latest pollution controls,” said Claire Arkin, campaign associate at Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. “You may think burning plastic means ‘poof, it’s gone’ but it puts some very nasty pollution into the air for communities that are already dealing with high rates of asthma and cancers.”

Hugging the western bank of the Delaware River, which separates Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Chester City was once a humming industrial outpost, hosting Ford and General Motors plants. Since the war, however, Chester has been hollowed out, with an exodus of jobs ushering in an era where a third of people live in poverty.

The industry that remains emits a cocktail of soot and chemicals upon a population of 34,000 residents, 70 percent of them black. There’s a waste water treatment plant, a nearby Kimberly-Clark paper mill, and a medical waste facility. And then there’s Covanta’s incinerator, one of the largest of its kind in the U.S.

Just a tiny fraction of the trash burned at the plant is from Chester — the rest is funneled in via truck and train from as far as New York City and North Carolina. The burning of trash releases a host of pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxides, and particulate matter, which are tiny fragments of debris that, once inhaled, cause an array of health problems.

It’s difficult to single out the exact cause of any cancer, but a host of studies have identified possible links between air pollution and ovarian and breast cancers, which are unusually prevalent in Chester. A 1995 report by the EPA found that air pollution from local industry provides a “large component of the cancer and non-cancer risk to the citizens of Chester.”

“There are higher than normal rates of heart disease, stroke, and asthma in Chester, which are all endpoints for poor air,” said Marilyn Howarth, a public health expert at the University of Pennsylvania who has advised Chester activists for the past six years.

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Howarth said residents now risk a worsened exposure to pollution due to increased truck traffic rumbling through their streets, bringing recycling to the plant. Once burned, plastics give off volatile organics, some of them carcinogenic.

“It is difficult to link any single case of cancer, heart disease, or asthma directly to a particular source. However, the emissions from Covanta contain known carcinogens so they absolutely increase the risk of cancer to area residents.”

Covanta say that pollution controls, such as scrubbers in smokestacks, will negate toxins emitted by recyclables. After passing through the emissions control system, the plant’s eventual output is comfortably below limits set by state and federal regulators, the company says, with emissions of dioxins far better than the expected standard.

The company also argues that incineration is a better option than simply heaping plastic and cardboard in landfills.

“In terms of greenhouse gases, it’s better sending recyclables to an energy recovery facility because of the methane that comes from a landfill,” said Paul Gilman, Covanta’s chief sustainability officer. “Fingers crossed Philadelphia can get their recycling program going again because these facilities aren’t designed for recyclables, they are designed for solid waste.”

Covanta and its critics agree that the whole recycling system in the U.S. will need to be overhauled to avoid further environmental damage. Just 9 percent of plastic is recycled in the U.S., with campaigns to push up recycling rates obscuring broader concerns about the environmental impact of mass consumption, whether derived from recycled materials or not.

“The unfortunate thing in the United States is that when people recycle they think it’s taken care of, when it was largely taken care of by China,” Gilman said. “When that stopped, it became clear we just aren’t able to deal with it.”

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‘Moment of reckoning:’ U.S. cities burn recyclables after China bans imports

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What I’ve Learned Photographing "a Place Where You Could Get Away With Murder"

Mother Jones

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I’ve spent the past seven years documenting the lives of people in Chester, Pennsylvania, a predominantly African American city of some 34,000 people located just southwest of Philadelphia. Three years into my time there, I realized that being an image-maker wasn’t having the impact I desired. Whenever I spoke with my best friend in Chester, Dee Dee, she always had the same stories: how someone shot up her street just the week before, or how she struggled to find a safe place for her children to sleep. People kept saying the same thing: Chester was a place where you could get away with murder.

So I began to investigate the high frequency of unsolved murder in Chester and how that reflects a national epidemic. As Edwin Rios and Kai Wright report in “Black Deaths Matter,” 144 killings in the city have gone unsolved since 2005. “Night now in Chester is night now in many places—night now in Philadelphia, in Camden, and every other place you can think of,” says Donald Newton, an activist and lifetime resident.

Why is it so hard for families of color to get justice when a loved one is murdered? Read our story from MoJo‘s May/June issue.

I have been collecting stories of families struggling to get justice following the murder of a loved one. This project is a deep investigation into the emotional, physical, and spiritual landscape that transpires from unresolved trauma. It consists of a series of portraits of each family affected by unresolved trauma, paired with an image from the murder scene captured around the time of day the crime was committed. I’ve also collected ephemeral material (letters, oral histories, love songs, drawings, diary entries, etc.) to involve the families in their depiction. By opening drawers and revisiting albums, this work aims to restore fragile memories and forge pathways to justice, healing, and restitution for the families of Chester.

This work is personal. When I was a teenager, my best friend, a young black man, was slain with a kitchen knife. The wealthy white man who killed him was never convicted. I witnessed my friend’s single mother unravel, my mother’s love the only thing holding her up. The questions that formed and went unanswered only lanced us deeper with time. The saving grace was our solidarity. With this project, I want to provide a safe space for families in Chester who are dealing with this same formation of loss, to connect and create understanding together.

The New York Times recently reported that 1.5 million black men are missing from American communities, mostly through imprisonment and early death. How does this missing generation affect the social landscape of the places they left behind? How do familial roles transform as a result? What does justice look like for families who are missing their beloved young men? I know the answer cannot simply be to put more black men in jail. With this work, I want people to understand the complexities of living in a community like Chester, and how everything is interlocked: a patchwork of trauma and courage, deeply rooted in the foundation of American society.

Right now, the immediate goal is to create an interactive, web-based platform that will serve both as a database of memories speaking to the collective experience of unresolved trauma and as an online space for conversations between community members. I hope to invite a larger audience to look beyond the stereotypes of a community in crisis and contemplate our commonalities—beliefs and biases—rather than our differences.

One issue does not define Chester. It is a multidimensional, changing landscape, and I’ve witnessed powerful moments of strength and beauty. Ultimately, in sharing this experience, I am optimistic at the prospect of disproving popular perception: Chester is not a place where you can get away with murder.

Jabril Bradley, 20; killed at Ninth Street and Avenue of the States
Bradley was riding his bike home from a friend’s house on the east side of Chester on September 1, 2011, when an unknown gunman opened fire. He was struck once in the back but continued to ride his bike home. Blocks later, he collapsed from blood loss. He bled to death on the street.

Terrance Webster, 2; killed at Chester Apartments, Ninth and Lamokin Street
Terrance Webster, son of Tisheta Green, was killed on June 14, 2010 at 2:30 a.m. The incident occurred as the family returned from another relative’s house. As they entered their apartment, several shots were fired at the father, who was carrying Terrance. The child was struck in the head and died shortly after in the hospital.
In photo: Tisheta Green (mother) with two of her sons

Karim “Cutty” Muhammad Alexander, 29; killed on Patterson Street, close to Penn Street
Alexander walked around the corner from his house on August 5, 2008, talking to a friend on the street when he was shot multiple times by an unknown gunman.
In photo: Sherrice Alexander Hill (mother), Robert Hill (father), Karim Alexander (son), Tara Watts (sister), Ayla Muhammad (sister), Sharifah Muhammad (sister)

Karim Alexander’s photos and letters

Gary Brightwell, 30; killed at Sunoco gas station, Ninth Street and Kerlin Street, pump No. 5.
Brightwell got a phone call and went to get gas in his car. He was shot once, killed at pump No. 5 in front of a number of people.
In photo: Shanell Brightwell (daughter), Jabrae Davis (grandson), Brezhae Davis (granddaughter)

Arthur “Art” McElwee, 23; killed in alley off Ninth Street, between Booth and Clover Streets
McElwee was shot multiple times in an alleyway and was pronounced dead at the scene of the crime.
In photo: Elena McElwee (mother), Elena Jo McElwee (twin sister), Dawn McElwee and Aisha McElwee (sisters).

Art McElwee photos and childhood mementos

Emill Smith, age 22; killed at the Green Bar on East Seventh Street, between Caldwell and McIlvain Streets
In the early evening of March 11, 2008, Emill Smith was leaving the Green Bar. According to accounts by witnesses at the scene, he kissed a friend on the forehead and was getting into a car when he was shot multiple times. He wore a chain that was worth upwards of $10,000. It was stolen from him the night he was killed.
In photo: Valerie Maxwell (mother), Janiyah Van (daughter), Khaneef Taylor (brother), Ka’Marion Tayler (brother), Ka’Tavion Tayler (brother)

Valerie Maxwell’s Facebook page, where she regularly posts to her son, Emill Smith

MacMatherson Miller, age 25; killed on West Seventh St., between Booth and Harwick Streets
Miller received a call from a friend on October 7, 2009, and was told to meet on the corner of Seventh and Booth. As he waited in his car, someone opened fire, killing him instantly. Miller had great promise in high school, where he was the star quarterback for Chester High School. (He was inducted posthumously into the Chester High School Hall of Fame.)
In photo: Tareeah Garrett (girlfriend), Asir Hudson (girlfriend’s son)

James Hamler III, 30; killed near American Legion Bar, West Seventh and Lloyd Streets
Late on the night of June 17, 2007, Hamler was outside the American Legion bar when a car drove up and opened fire on the crowd. Hamler was hit and died on the scene.

James Hamler photos and memorial

Eddie “Fast Eddie” Swain-Lane, 29; killed at Third and Palmer Streets
Swain-Laine died after trying to save his girlfriend, Shanae Bailey, and her three-year-old daughter, Anaija Bailey, as a fire ripped through their home. He was down the street when he realized his home was on fire; he ran to the house and made the decision to go inside the burning house. The death was ruled suspicious but no investigation was completed.

Linda Rose Brown, 44; killed at Edwards Street, corner of Highway 291
In late March 1998, Brown went missing. Her body was found two weeks later in an abandoned building. The day Brown’s body was found, her son Tyrone King was called by a police officer at the scene and was told to come and identify the body. Based on physical evidence, the police told King she was strangled to death by a wire hanger, then shot in the head and later dumped.
In photo: Tyrone “TK” King (son), Hammenah Rollie (daughter), Amin Rollie (son)

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What I’ve Learned Photographing "a Place Where You Could Get Away With Murder"

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Meet 5 of the Low-Level Drug Offenders Obama Could Set Free. There Are Thousands More Like Them

Mother Jones

On Wednesday, the Department of Justice announced that thousands of federal inmates serving time for certain non-violent crimes will soon be able to apply for clemency.

Those eligible to be set free will be prisoners convicted of low-level nonviolent crimes—mostly drug offenses—who have already served 10 years of their sentence, don’t have a significant criminal history, and are serving out a sentence the would likely be shorter had they been convicted for the same crime today. The rule change could apply to some 2,000 of the 200,000 inmates in federal prison, and is part of a wider effort by the Obama administration to make sentencing laws more fair. Last year, the DOJ changed sentencing guidelines to give judges the freedom to determine whether or not to apply mandatory minimums for certain drug charges.

Here are five federal prisoners who will be eligible for clemency under the DOJ’s new rules (via Families Against Mandatory Minimums):

Weldon Angelos: Angelos is serving 55 years for selling a few pounds of marijuana while in possession of a gun. In his early 20s, Angelos founded a successful Utah-based rap label called Extravagant Records, where he wrote and produced songs with artists like Snoop Dogg. In 2002, the Salt Lake City police, who suspected Angelos was part of a local gang, arranged for an informant to purchase marijuana from him. The informant claimed that Angelos had firearms with him during both buys. When the judge in the case was forced to sentence Angelos to a mandatory 55 years, he called the punishment “unjust, cruel, and even irrational,” noting that repeat child rapists and airplane hijackers get shorter sentences.

Sherman Chester: Chester is serving life without parole for selling cocaine and heroin as part of a drug ring. Chester started selling small amounts in his 20s and soon got involved in a drug conspiracy headed up by a family friend near Tampa, Florida. After an undercover detective bought from him on several occasions, Chester was indicted in federal court in 1992 along with nine others involved in the ring. He was 25. Chester was sentenced as if he had been in possession of nearly the entire amount of heroin and cocaine found on all members of the conspiracy. The judge who meted out Chester’s harsh punishment said, “This man doesn’t deserve a life sentence, and there is no way that I can legally keep from giving it to him.”

Sharanda Jones: Jones is serving life without parole for allegedly leading a drug ring. After high school, Jones worked as a restaurant manager and cosmetologist. Unable to support her family on her income, she began selling coke and crack in the Dallas area. In 1999, at age 32, Jones was found guilty of taking part in a conspiracy to sell crack, and sentenced to life. Jones received such a harsh sentence because she allegedly carried a gun when she went to buy cocaine from her supplier; because the court considered her a “leader” of the ring; and because she claimed innocence. Her co-conspirators got sentences that ranged between five and 19 years. Jones’ daughter, who was eight when Sharanda went to prison, is now an adult.

Barbara Scrivner: Scrivner is serving 30 years in federal prison for participating in a drug ring. Scrivner was molested as a child, and later fell into drugs and a string of abusive relationships. At age 26, in order to make ends meet, Scrivner started selling small amounts of meth as part of a drug ring. The other participants in the conspiracy were arrested in 1992, but Scrivner initially was spared because she only played a bit part in the ring. A year later, after she refused to testify against the other members, Scrivner was indicted and held accountable for 109 kilos of meth. Once behind bars, Scrivner plunged into depression and attempted suicide by jumping from a 40-foot prison building. She survived, and has since undergone rehab.

Timothy Tyler: Tyler is serving a mandatory life sentence for selling LSD. After high school, Tyler traveled around the country following the Grateful Dead, doing drugs, and being hospitalized for mental health problems. He was arrested a couple of times for selling. In 1992, Tyler sold LSD and marijuana to an informant, and was later charged with possession and conspiracy to distribute along with three other codefendants, one of whom was his father. Partly because of prior convictions, Tyler went to prison for life, while his codefendants only got five to ten years. His father died serving out his term.

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Meet 5 of the Low-Level Drug Offenders Obama Could Set Free. There Are Thousands More Like Them

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