Help us support the Stop Trashing Our Air Act, which would ban Philadelphia from burning its trash, recyclables or compostables. You can send a message to Philadelphia City Council through this action alert here. The bill, written in 2021 by Mike Ewall at the Philadelphia-based national nonprofit, Energy Justice Network, was introduced in Philadelphia City Council in September 2025, and was approved in a 5-1 vote in City Council’s Environment Committee in November.

The city’s waste contracts expire on June 30th, 2026 and the next contracts will likely be for another seven years. If we help Philadelphians get this bill passed, it’ll stop about 163,000 tons of Philly trash from being burned in Chester every year. This is 14% of what the incinerator burns, and around half of the trash coming from Philly (the other half is from the private sector and isn’t impacted by the city’s waste contracts). Check out the PhillyZeroWaste.org website for more information!

On Wednesday, 9/17/2025, Delaware County Council adopted an ambitious Zero Waste Plan that we were instrumental in developing throughout a four-year process. This plan is significant for a few reasons:

• The Plan includes a comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment which documents that incinerating trash at the Reworld (formerly Covanta) trash incinerator in the City of Chester is 2.3 times more harmful for climate, environment, and human health than disposing of waste in the county’s landfill directly, without burning it first. That analysis also shows that transportation emissions are insignificant compared to those from the disposal facilities.
• The Plan is explicitly guided by the internationally peer-reviewed definition of Zero Waste and the Zero Waste Hierarchy — a set of waste management priorities that we developed which are now used as an international standard through the Zero Waste International Alliance. In contrast with EPA’s waste management hierarchy, which places incineration above landfilling, the Zero Waste Hierarchy recognizes that incineration is worse and is considered “unacceptable” in a Zero Waste system.
• The Plan states: “In evaluating and understanding these impacts, Delaware County has expressed interest in moving away from incineration.”

In supporting the plan, many Delaware County residents emailed County Council to urge them to fund the plan, end incineration ASAP, and preserve the county’s landfill space for Delaware County use instead of selling it off to other counties and states.

We’re calling on everyone in Delco to raise up their voices to tell County Council to:

• Dial back use of the incinerator to zero as rapidly as possible.
• Fund the Delco Solid Waste Authority and municipalities to implement the Delco Zero Waste Plan.
• Work with DCSWA to ensure that they save the county’s Rolling Hills Landfill space for (unburned) Delco trash.

Check out our most recent presentation on incineration and the harms it causes for our environment and our communities:

https://www.delcoej.org/pdf/2025incinerationppt.pdf

DCSWA is intentionally trying to fill the county landfill as fast as possible to get back in better financial shape, and it keeps taking incinerator ash (mostly from burning NON-Delco waste), plus trash and industrial wastes from Berks and Montgomery Counties, and industrial wastes from New Jersey.

This landfill space is PRECIOUS and the price DCSWA sells it for now is far less than what the county will have to start paying for private landfills once Rolling Hills Landfill fills up.

Only County Council can stop DCSWA from squandering this county resource for short-term financial considerations.

Let’s speak up! Contact us and contact members of Council today!