Alternatives

Worcester County, Maryland (where Ocean City is) has its own public landfill and a recycling facility. For less than Ocean City pays Covanta to burn its waste, Ocean City could go back to recycling and using the county’s nearby landfill instead of shipping trash 2-3 hours away to burn in a filthy incinerator in the City of Chester, PA, then truck toxic ash further north to landfill in Pennsylvania.

Incineration (and landfilling ash) is worse than direct use of landfills, so the most immediate alternative is to use the local landfill. Adopting Zero Waste measures to reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost discarded materials can go a long way to reducing waste to landfills. The major first building blocks of a successful Zero Waste program are to have mandatory recycling and composting with curbside collection, and a unit pricing (pay per bag or per bin) system to provide the incentive to reduce waste. Between these measures alone, most local governments can reduce waste by 60-70%. See the Zero Waste Hierarchy to learn more.

Learn about our demands because Ocean City has other options opposed to incineration.