EnviroPolitics Blog

New York communities awarded $73.5M in federal forestry grants

USDA Forest Service Urban and Community Forestry Grants

From the New York Department of Environmental Conservation

On September 14, the USDA Forest Service announced over a billion dollars in funding to urban forestry projects around the country through the Inflation Reduction Action. 28 communities in New York were awarded grants, totaling $73.5 million dollars – the second highest state amount, and the highest amount of any state per capita! We are so excited for these communities and look forward to supporting the amazing projects over the next 5 years.

Some highlights:

$9 million for the Central New York Planning Board’s project to provide resources for disadvantaged communities in Central New York.
$8 million for the City of Buffalo Equity in Street Trees Program (B.E.S.T.) which aims to create an equitable urban tree canopy.
$3 million for the City of Rochester’s project to increase tree-stocking levels in underserved and disadvantaged communities, create a more equitable distribution of trees in the City, and educate and engage community members in tree planting and stewardship.
$1 million for Mount Vernon to implement an Urban Forestry Program that includes hiring program staff, conducting a city-wide tree inventory and mapping, developing of an urban forest management plan, and community outreach and education.
$1 million for the Town of North Hempstead to conserve and increase equitable tree canopy as well as educate residents about their value and proactive maintenance.
$597,000 for the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe’s Akwesasne Urban Tree Canopy Assessment and Management project, which aims to improve the urban tree canopy in Akwesasne through a street tree inventory, development of an updated forest management plan, and implementation via tree planting and maintenance.
$400,000 for the City of Glens Falls to implement a tree management plan in two disadvantaged communities and hire a certified arborist.

View the entire list of New York Communities that received funding.

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Gov. Newsom signs law expanding California’s bottle bill program

Plastic bottles — Recycled plastic bottles are seen at the San Francisco Recycling Center March 2, 2005 in San Francisco, California *Justin Sullivan via Getty Images*

By Cole Rosengren, Waste Dive

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed an expansion to the state’s bottle bill that supporters say will bolster a struggling system of redemption centers.

SB 353, sponsored by state Sen. Bill Dodd, directs CalRecycle to update the formula it uses for processing payments to redemption centers. To calculate values, the system currently uses a 12-month average of scrap values from the prior year, with a minimum three-month lag.

Related bottle bill story
Newsom signs off on update to California’s bottle recycling law

“This undermines the economic viability of centers at times when payments do not compensate centers enough if scrap prices quickly drop, resulting in shortfalls,” said the Container Recycling Institute, a supporter of SB 353, in a statement thanking Newsom for signing the bill into law.

Now, CalRecycle will use a formula that bases processing payments on average scrap values from the prior three months. CRI anticipates this will help more redemption centers stay in business after the state has seen more than half of its locations close in the last 10 years.

Read the full story here

Gov. Newsom signs law expanding California’s bottle bill program Read More »

Last call for Organics Waste Management Summit 2023

Two Days Away from Organics Waste Management Summit 2023!

We’re just a couple of days away from the 2023 Organics Waste Management Summit: The New Recycling Frontier!

We have an exciting day of panels and networking lined up in our full schedule, we don’t want you to miss out!

14 speakers, Farm to Table breakfast and lunch, Wine Reception, sold-out exhibitors, and plenty of opportunities for networking with DEP, County and local officials, academics, industry professionals, experts, and more!

This is your last call to join us!

Get Tickets!

Last call for Organics Waste Management Summit 2023 Read More »

Realvu breaks ground on chemical recycling plant in Georgia

The process will convert PET plastics for textile use. Other developers have failed to get off the ground

men with shovels and hard hats pose for a photo at a groundbreaking in Statesboro, Georgia. — *Employees of Revalyu and members of the Development Authority of Bulloch County break ground on Revalyu’s new chemical recycling facility in Statesboro, Georgia. Courtesy of revalyu*

By Megan Quinn, Waste Dive

A German chemical recycling company, Revalyu Resources, has broken ground on its first U.S. facility. It aims to recycle 200 million pounds of post-consumer PET per year.

The company is investing more than $200 million in the glycolysis facility in Statesboro, Georgia. It expects the facility to be operational by the third quarter of 2025. Revalyu already uses glycolysis at its facility in India. The company has processed 6 billion bottles there so far, according to a news release.

Revalyu said it mainly uses recycled PET resin in the textile industry for automotive, denim, furniture, weaving, and other technical applications.

The company plans to recycle 25 million plastic bottles per day once the plant is up and running, said Jan van Kisfeld, Revalyu’s managing director. “Our first plant in the U.S. is a very important step for the expansion of our company,” he said in the news release. “Our existing and future U.S. customers have a huge demand.”

The project is meant to create 71 jobs in its first phase of operations. In its second phase, it plans to add another 50 jobs, according to the company.

Revalyu first announced the project in January 2023. At that time, the company estimated it would invest $50 million in the “initial phase” of the project, hire 70 people, and have the facility commissioned by 2024, according to an earlier announcement.

Other chemical recycling companies have eyed Georgia for their own facilities. PureCycle, which has seen delayed progress at an Ohio site, aims to build a “polypropylene purification facility” in Augusta that it says will eventually be capable of producing 1 billion pounds of recycled resin. In May, PureCycle announced that it has approval from the local development authority to continue working on its planned project site in the Augusta Corporate Park.

But other high-profile chemical recycling projects in Georgia have failed to get off the ground. In 2022, Brightmark Energy and the Macon-Bibb County Industrial Authority scrapped an agreement to build a $680 million chemical recycling facility after Brightmark missed a deadline to deliver “end products” to customers of one of its locations in Indiana — a condition of its contract with the authority, according to Reuters.

Realvu breaks ground on chemical recycling plant in Georgia Read More »

Use this phone app to help NJ track endangered wildlife

Wildlife sightings from the public are incredibly useful to New Jersey DEP Fish and Wildlife.

The division recently launched NJ Wildlife Tracker, a web application you can use from your cell phone or computer to report observations of rare wildlife species and wildlife of any kind on roadways. Your sightings of wildlife on roads will help the state’s wildlife team identify problem spots across the state – like places with frequent roadkill or at-risk species being impacted by roads. These can point us toward opportunities to build safer road-crossings for animals.

Please practice “Safety First” in every situation, especially along roadways.

Use this phone app to help NJ track endangered wildlife Read More »

800,000 tons of radioactive waste from Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry has gone “missing”

Poor recordkeeping on hazardous waste disposal points to the potential for bigger problems, according to a new study.

By Kristina Marusic, Daily Climate

PITTSBURGH — Waste from the oil and gas industry contains toxic and radioactive substances. Disposal of this waste is supposed to be carefully tracked, but 800,000 tons of oil and gas waste from Pennsylvania oil and gas wells is unaccounted for, according to a recent study.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Duquesne University initially set out to investigate whether sediment in rivers and streams near landfills accepting higher volumes of oil and gas waste contained higher levels of radioactivity. But they discovered significant problems with the records meant to track this waste.

“We set out to write a different paper,” Daniel Bain, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the authors of the study, told Environmental Health News (EHN), “but once we got into the records, we realized there was no hope of being able to meaningfully do this kind of assessment.”

The study, published in the journal Ecological Indicators, compared records on Pennsylvania’s oil and gas waste from 2010-2020, and uncovered significant gaps between what oil and gas operators reported they’d sent to landfills and what the landfills reported receiving. The records were so different that the researchers couldn’t find a single case where the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) Oil & Gas Report figures on this hazardous waste matched reports from the landfills receiving it.

This type of waste often contains toxic chemicals and carcinogens, including high levels of heavy metals like arsenic, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, and radioactive materials. Previous research has shown that radioactive contaminants from fracking waste can linger in local waterways and wildlife for decades.

“You assume the people regulating hazardous waste would be double-checking these records,” Bain said. “We thought they could be off by maybe 10% — we didn’t expect anything like this.”

Read the full story here

800,000 tons of radioactive waste from Pennsylvania’s oil and gas industry has gone “missing” Read More »