In the last 15 years, most of the nation's environmental gains have resulted in spite of, not because of, government. Legislative bodies in some places are almost wholly owned by polluting industries as is Congress; in Washington, lobbyists for polluters are now running many federal environmental and natural resource programs. So what's to be done? Direct pressure from citizens mostly. It's happening in Minnesota now on wetlands and in Michigan on Dow's dioxin mess. And here's a story of how it can work nationally.
VICTORY --- Around Dioxin Emissions Nationwide Won By Grassroots Groups
This decrease is the direct result of organized efforts and enormous undertakings by grassroots groups across the country that successfully shut down dioxin emission facilities at their source.
The decease is far reaching and goes beyond what a regulation would have been able to achieve at a national level. This nationwide reduction will have the practical effect of protecting human health in ways that government has been unwilling to bring about due to their cowering to the chemical industry.
Here are the facts:
The decrease in dioxin air emissions from 1987 to 1995 reported by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) (and repeated continuously by the chlorine and vinyl industry) is due to the closure of the worst sources of dioxin emissions - Municipal Solid Waste Incinerators (MSWI) with Hot-side Electrostatic Precipitators (ESPs) and Medical Waste Incinerators (MWI). The reduction in dioxin emissions from these two sources alone accounted for over 90% of the total reduction in dioxin emissions during this time period.
The grassroots movement’s first efforts to eliminate sources of dioxin were focused on waste disposal. We began by working with communities around 54 of the worst garbage incinerators. In partnership with groups living near these incinerators, referred to as “dioxin factories” by the USEPA, 49 were successfully closed down!
This is significant because as a result of this local “source-based” work, we’ve reduced overall dioxin air emissions. According to EPA estimates, these 49 plants generated 84% of the total amount of dioxin generated by garbage incinerators and 53% of the total air emissions released by all sources.
Similarly, working with grassroots groups living near medical waste incinerators, which were the second largest source of dioxin air emissions, resulted in the closure of over 2,600 medical waste incinerators between 1987 and 1995. The reduction in air emissions attributable to shutting down these medical waste incinerators is 20%.
At the same time that grassroots community-based groups living near municipal and medical waste incinerator were successfully organizing to shut the facilities down, other grassroots groups were fighting to force many paper and pulp companies to stop using chlorine and to move to a less harmful bleaching process. In addition, since 1995, there have been many successful efforts to pass laws to eliminate backyard burning, another major source of dioxin air emissions as well as successful campaigns, such as Health Care Without Harm, that changed the purchasing and waste management practices in specific industry sectors.
The chlorine and chemical industry have done nothing to reduce dioxin levels.