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Good Neighbors?


 

If you are able to access it, I’d like to recommend this piece in the Baltimore Banner: 

A chemical company wants to recycle plastics in Columbia. Neighbors worry about the impact on air quality. Jess Nocera, Baltimore Banner

A Maryland-based chemical company with a history of environmental violations is planning to build a pilot plastics recycling plant within a mile of several residential neighborhoods in Columbia.

The company is W.R. Grace & Co., which has a terrible track record in environmental pollution. The proposed pilot program is to be located in a place that is widely known to be Grace’s administrative headquarters. 

This makes no sense to me. 

I don’t want to be one of those people who goes off the deep end after reading one article. So, I’m inviting you to read it, too. What is your take? Is the community right to have environmental concerns? Is placing a chemical recycling pilot plant in what was assumed to be essentially an office complex an acceptable use of that land?

It’s not lost on me that we are reading about this because the residential neighborhood in question is in an affluent county. These sorts of decisions have been foisted on poor communities and predominantly Black communities time and time again and their stories didn’t make the news until long after the damage was done. 

Something else that troubles me. 

According to a 2023 report, “Chemical Recycling: A Dangerous Deception,” this recycling process provides a “false solution.” “Chemical recycling has failed for decades, continues to fail, and there is no evidence that it will contribute to resolving the plastics pollution crisis,” according to the report published by Beyond Plastics and IPEN — the International Pollutants Elimination Network.

If attempts to put a dent in single-use plastic pollution creates a whole different kind of pollution, what’s the point of that? 


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