Climate Activist Group Earth Quaker Action Team Protests At Conshohocken Incinerator

CONSHOHOCKEN, PA — A group of climate justice activists took to the streets in this Montgomery County borough this past weekend to protest the actions of a company that runs a local trash incinerator.

Members of the Earth Quaker Action Team protested on Jan. 8 outside of the gate to the Covanta incinerator to raise awareness of what it says is the "role of big money in perpetuating pollution and dangerous greenhouse gases," such as those being emitted by the facility.

The group claims that Vanguard, which funds the incinerator, drives climate change through its investment in such greenhouse gas emitters as the Covanta incinerator in Conshohocken.

It says that neighbors in the area have supported the protest, coming out this past weekend to join the event and hold signs that criticize the company for contributing to ill health effects in the area.

"We're here because Vanguard's investments, including Covanta, are harming people locally, while contributing to climate change both in our region and around the world," Earth Quaker Action Team member Louise Willis, who lives in King of Prussia and says she can smell the incinerator from her home, said in a statement.

The Earth Quaker Action Teams says that the Covanta incinerator protest was the second stop on the group's Points of Destruction Tour, which takes protestors to various sites in the region that it says are causing harm to residents and communities.

The EQAT says that its string of protests is part of a larger campaign waged by it and Sunrise Project, another climate advocacy group, that it calls the "Vanguard's Very Big Problem" tour.

The larger campaign, according to the EQAT, seeks to have the Malvern, Chester County-based asset manager Vanguard use its power to insist that companies like Covanta move away from causing harmful pollution and instead invest in an "energy future that does not endanger our communities or our climate," according to a news release from the EQAT.

The EQAT, citing information from the Energy Justice Network, says that trash incineration is both the most expensive, and most polluting, way to manage waste or make waste energy, with recycling and composting both serving as better options.

"These incinerators contribute to Philadelphia's status as the #1 large city for getting cancer and our metro area as one of the top 10 asthma capitals in the nation," Mike Ewall, executive director of the Energy Justice Network, said in a statement. "The Covanta Plymouth incinerator has been malfunctioning routinely for three years now ... we should conserve our state's plentiful landfill space with waste reduction, reuse, recycling and composting measures instead of turning trash into ash and air pollution."

Anyone interested in learning more about Earth Quaker Action Team and its mission can visit the group's website.