{"id":99142,"date":"2026-01-28T21:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T21:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/99142\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T21:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T21:01:07","slug":"incinerator-or-landfill-phillys-trash-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/99142\/","title":{"rendered":"Incinerator or landfill? Philly\u2019s trash problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Philadelphia City Council is weighing a bill that would ban the city from sending waste to incinerators like the one in Chester \u2014 the largest trash-to-energy incinerator in the country. It\u2019s the <a href=\"https:\/\/phlcouncil.com\/stop-trashing-our-air\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Stop Trashing Our Air Act<\/a>, and was introduced by Councilmember Jamie Gauthier.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Philadelphia sends 37% of its waste to incinerators, most going to Reworld\u2019s Chester facility. \u00a0 Activists and public health experts say the incinerator emits dangerous pollutants and point to the city\u2019s high rates of childhood asthma. Opponents say it also hinders economic development in the city, leading to more blight.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But Reworld, formerly Covanta, which owns the plant, points out that their Chester facility generates electricity for 51,000 homes and that diverting Philadelphia trash to landfills would increase greenhouse gas emissions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So today, how do incinerators stack up to landfills?\u00a0 Why are they so often built in working-class Black neighborhoods? And what should we do with all our trash?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Guests:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/phlcouncil.com\/jamiegauthier\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Councilmember Jamie Gauthier<\/a>, represents Philadelphia\u2019s Third Council District<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/chesterpaej.org\/about\/zulene-mayfield\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Zulene Mayfield<\/a>, activist with Chester Residents Concerned for Quality of Living (CRCQL)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.swarthmore.edu\/engineering\/faculty-staff\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sintana Vergara<\/a>, assistant professor of engineering at Swarthmore College<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Philadelphia City Council is weighing a bill that would ban the city from sending waste to incinerators like&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[28,69,71,70,12736],"class_list":{"0":"post-99142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-pennsylvania","9":"tag-philadelphia","10":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","11":"tag-philadelphia-news","12":"tag-studio-2"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}