![\"trash\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/20220914CityLimitsTrash-75731920X1280.jpg\")
Trash out for pick up in Manhattan. Some of the borough\u2019s residential garbage is exported to an incineration facility in Chester, PA. (Adi Talwar\/City Limits) <\/p>\nPhiladelphia\u2019s City Council is debating a bill that would ban the City of Brotherly Love from exporting its trash for incineration, citing pollution and impact on human health. Should New York City follow suit? Doing so would require a major reduction of its trash output, experts say.<\/p>\n
Trash out for pick up in Manhattan. Some of the borough\u2019s residential garbage is exported to an incineration facility in Chester, PA. (Adi Talwar\/City Limits) <\/p>\n
Over the last 35 years, New York City has sent more than 6 million tons of trash to be burned at an incineration plant in Pennsylvania\u2019s Delaware Valley, according to that state\u2019s Department of Environmental Protection records.<\/p>\n
Over 33,000 people live within a few miles of the plant in Chester, PA. Respiratory problems are commonplace in the city, which is also home to a sewage treatment plant, a paper mill and other industrial sites.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a kid in the 60s and 70s. We were outdoor kids. I don\u2019t remember a single child having asthma or using a nebulizer,\u201d said Chester\u2019s Mayor Stefan Roots. \u201cNow depending on where you look we may be the highest concentration of folks in the state with breathing issues. Kids struggle greatly which was never the case in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roots has mixed feelings about the plant. On one hand he has a fiduciary responsibility to the city he presides over, and the Reworld facility employs some 130 people and brings in needed tax revenue. On the other hand, he knows human health must come first.<\/p>\n
A proposed bill<\/a> out of Philadelphia, which also exports its trash to Chester, would discontinue that practice\u2014and ban the City of Brotherly Love from burning its waste altogether. The Stop Trashing Our Air Act passed an initial review by the Philadelphia City Council\u2019s environmental committee last fall. Now it needs the support of a super majority, 12 of 17 council members, to bypass a potential mayoral veto.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t want the bill to come to a vote until we know council members will support it,\u201d said environmental lawyer Mike Ewall, one of the key stakeholders who helped draft the act.\u00a0<\/p>\n If New York City follows suit in pursuing an end to trash incineration, it could improve tens of thousands of lives and significantly reduce the city\u2019s climate impact, he and other environmental advocates say.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe bill was designed to stop us from perpetuating what I see and what many see as environmental racism in the city of Chester,\u201d said Philadelphia Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who sponsored the legislation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Chester\u2019s population is predominately Black, and around 29 percent of residents live in poverty, according to census data<\/a>. The city\u2019s childhood asthma hospitalization rates are three times higher than anywhere else in Pennsylvania according to the PA Department of Health, while the Philadelphia metro area\u2014about 15 miles from Chester\u2014has ranked in the top 10 asthma capitals of the United States since 2018, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.<\/p>\n Gauthier spoke with City Limits late last year, shortly before current Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office, and was encouraged by his platform.\u00a0\u201cIt seems like New York city is on the verge of leadership that would consider stopping sending trash to Chester,\u201d the Philly lawmaker said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The trash conundrum: burn or bury?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n New York City\u2019s residential waste\u2014or the roughly 80 percent that isn\u2019t diverted for recycling or compost<\/a>\u2014is primarily exported to states along the east coast, bound for either a landfill or an incineration plant. In recent months, environmental activists have ramped up calls to close the landfill in Seneca Meadows upstate, where New York City also sends its trash<\/a>, citing the potential health risks.\u00a0<\/p>\n Reworld\u2019s Chester site is what\u2019s known as a waste-to-energy facility\u2014meaning the byproduct of incinerating the waste it collects generates heat energy. A spokesperson for the NYC Department of Sanitation says it does not include a preference for either incineration or landfill in its waste disposal contracts, but noted that a majority of the city\u2019s trash ends up in landfills \u201con the basis of cost alone.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWaste-to-energy facilities offer notable environmental benefits over landfills,\u201d DSNY Press Secretary Vincent Gragnani told City Limits in an email. \u201cThey take up far less space, reduce most waste to ash, generate electricity, do not emit methane, and recover virtually all metals for recycling.\u201d<\/p>\n But some scientific research <\/a>has suggested that waste incineration can be worse for human health and air quality than burning coal for energy or a properly managed landfill, and that a significant portion of what ends up getting incinerated could have been recycled<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGarbage incineration is an expensive and polluting waste management strategy,\u201d said Judith Enck, a former administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.\u00a0<\/p>\n She hopes that New York City will consider a similar law to the one proposed in Philadelphia. \u201cEspecially with the new mayor being committed to addressing climate change and environmental justice,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Enck is also concerned about Ironbound, a neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey that\u2019s one of the other two locations New York City sends its waste for incineration, which is also operated by Reworld.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn the 1980s, Mayor David Dinkins wanted to build five new waste incinerators<\/a>\u2014one in each borough,\u201d said Enck. \u201cIntense community opposition ensured that they were never built. But decades later, sending waste to be burned in Newark, NJ, is also [an] abysmal failure.\u201d<\/p>\n Mayor Mamdani\u2019s official campaign website stated that decarbonization is one of his top climate priorities. But the mayor\u2019s office did not respond to City Limits\u2019 queries about the Philadelphia bill, or whether New York City would also reconsider its contract with Reworld, which doesn\u2019t expire for another seven years.<\/p>\n New York City\u2019s relationship with the trash disposal company dates back to when it was still called Covanta. The current 700-page contract, first struck in 2013, slates municipal waste refuse from Manhattan and Queens to be burnt at the company\u2019s facilities, including the Chester site, until 2033.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Chester environmentalists argue that<\/a> Reworld lacks basic pollution controls at its incineration plant, such as activated carbon injection, which reduces mercury and other harmful emissions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Last year, New York\u2019s Department of Environmental Conservation ordered Reworld to pay <\/a>$378,500 in violations for mishandling waste ash at another of its plants in Hempstead, Long Island. The company\u2014valued at $5.3 billion dollars in 2021<\/a>\u2014also had to allocate $500,000 to an \u201cEnvironmental Benefit Fund\u201d chosen by Hempstead\u2019s community members.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In a statement to City Limits, Reworld said the Chester facility meets local emissions limits, which it says fall \u201cwell below permit limits established by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere are no health-based restrictions on living, working, or recreating near the facility,\u201d Linda Ribakusky, director of communications at Reworld, told City Limits via email, saying that waste-to-energy sites like the one in Chester \u201chave been well studied, and are found to be protective of human health and the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n In an email, DSNY Spokesman Gragnani said that all facilities the city contracts with must comply with a slew of local, state, and federal regulations, including around\u00a0 emissions.<\/p>\n \u201cWe acknowledge that local communities that host waste-to-energy facilities often oppose them,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn fact, there is no truly sustainable or environmentally just way to dispose of trash,\u201d Gragnani added. \u201cEvery disposal method imposes burdens on the local community that hosts it and on the environment more generally, and the Department has worked for decades to reduce the amount of trash New Yorkers throw away, in part to reduce these burdens overall.\u201d<\/p>\n Shrinking the city\u2019s trash footprint\u00a0<\/p>\n New York City sends 32.4 percent of its total residential (municipal) waste to be incinerated. The remaining 67.6 percent ends up in landfills both within New York State and as distant as South Carolina. Trash is hauled to transfer stations and shipped to these locations either by barge or rail, according to data compiled<\/a> by the Brooklyn and Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Boards.\u00a0<\/p>\n New York\u2019s Department of Sanitation contracts directly with Reworld. New York City would need to pass legislation to undo its agreement with the privately held company, according to Linda Shaw, a New York-based environmental lawyer and the managing partner at Knauf & Shaw.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGarbage used to be a public responsibility. It was government-run. Now if you look at the solid waste management plan, waste management is almost all run by the private sector,\u201d said Shaw, who recently represented plaintiffs who suffered from noxious odors and methane gas leaks from a landfill operated by Waste Management near Rochester<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The problem with ending the practice, she and other experts say, is that there are currently few viable alternatives to landfills and incinerators. Until New York City significantly reduces the amount of waste it produces, all that trash has to go somewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n Currently, less than 20 percent of what the Sanitation Department collects gets diverted for recycling or composting, the most recent city data shows<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to achieve the diversion goals and find responsible alternatives before doing away with incineration entirely. We can\u2019t just make it go away,\u201d said Matt Civello, chair of the fundraising committee of the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board, a volunteer committee that advocates for the city\u2019s waste reduction efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n Civello did note that at least some blame belongs with the producers of polluting material. Many of the same companies associated with oil production are also the biggest producers of single use plastic<\/a> globally and in the United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have made recycling way too complicated. It is hard to blame the consumer,\u201d said Civello. \u201cWe need to change policy, so incineration is on the bottom of the list of tools to handle waste.\u201d<\/p>\n Eric Goldstein, a senior attorney at the National Resource Defense Council, agreed. \u201cProducers of packaging and other materials need to find ways to use less materials,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Reducing New York City\u2019s waste stream also involves bolstering its compost program, he said, \u201cso that New Yorkers understand how to compost, where to compost and why it\u2019s important to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey need to step up reasonable enforcement measures,\u201d Goldstein said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey also need to boost the city\u2019s processing capacity because that is the most environmentally and economically sound way of dealing with food scraps,\u201d he added, referring to roughly 40 percent of the collected organic waste that the city converts to fuel instead of compost<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Indeed, less than 3 percent of all residential waste collected in 2025 was diverted for composting, despite compostable materials\u2014which the city classifies as \u201corganics\u201d\u2014accounting for roughly 36 percent of the city\u2019s garbage stream, according to a recent report <\/a>\u00a0from the New York City Independent Budget Office.\u00a0<\/p>\n The report concluded that there is a direct correlation between the city\u2019s enforcement of its new mandatory composting policy and the amount of organics collected.<\/p>\n New York City boasts the nation\u2019s largest composting program, which substantially began during Mayor Eric Adams\u2019 administration\u2014though the former mayor largely paused enforcement last year, and the city only resumed issuing fines to buildings owners who fail to comply at the start of 2026<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since then, DSNY has issued roughly 40,000 summonses to property owners who set out food and yard waste commingled with trash this calendar year, according to a spokesman.<\/p>\n Curbside composting\u00a0\u201cis diverting record amounts of compostable material from the waste stream, and as more and more New Yorkers become accustomed to separating their food and yard waste, this program offers a great opportunity for further increasing our diversion rates,\u201d Gragnani said.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But according to Civello, city leadership needs to get behind that goal for it to actually happen.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe real movement on sustainability needs to come from outside DSNY. We need a mayor to lead the way and take it seriously,\u201d he said. \u201cOut of sight out of mind doesn\u2019t work for New York City trash. Where the trash ends up causes harm to those near it.\u201d<\/p>\n To reach the editor, contact [email\u00a0protected]<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Chris](\"https:\/\/citylimits.org\/wp-content\/plugins\/trx_addons\/components\/lazy-load\/images\/placeholder.png\")
Philadelphia City Council member Jamie Gauthier, who sponsored the city\u2019s bill to end trash incineration. (Credit: Chris Mansfield\/PHL City Council)<\/p>\nThe Reworld facility in Chester, PA. (Ben Land\/City Limits)<\/p>\nA municipal recycling facility in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. (Michael Appleton\/Mayoral Photography Office)<\/p>\nComposting bins and trash set out for collection on Bainbridge Avenue in the Bronx. (Adi Talwar\/City Limits)<\/p>\n